


All The Leaves Are Brown (And The Sky Is Gray)

by paxnirvana



Category: Avengers (Comics), Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gender Issues, Guilt, M/M, Sexual Identity, Sexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2013-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:23:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 88,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxnirvana/pseuds/paxnirvana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Just Pre Heroic Age) - The Avengers aren't quite back together yet, things are still a little rocky between Tony Stark and Commander Rogers, and Tony's slaving away at Stark Resilient, trying to make a fortune again to fund everyone's superhero habit -- and stay on his best behavior for Steve -- when Maria Hill calls him with a problem... an unidentified Iron Man suit has appeared in New York City. But it's not talking.</p><p>~*~</p><p>August 2013: Yes, an update. Finally. It's been a long time, but I have a window of relief and I'm taking it. Real Life blows sometimes. -_-</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Generalized, non-spoiler WARNINGS: This deals with a lot of what could be Tony Stark’s built-up self-hate and guilt (if Fraction made him actually give a damn), and other’s resentment of him for his past actions. That means possibly triggering discussions, name-calling, dark unhealthy thoughts, and references to self-harm and critical medical issues (heart), but I do most sincerely promise no non-canon character death. Has discussions of sexuality and sexual identity but this is NOT a gender-swap.
> 
>  
> 
> Extended Author’s Note: Apologies to anyone who actually still is a huge Secret Wars fan, because I pretty much just rip it for a villain and don’t really care about what actually happened during it other than that the 616 heroes came out of it alive and it happened a while ago. (Not a Jim Shooter fan, sry.) I’m pretty AU here already, so you can probably deal. :p
> 
> This is me, trying to deal with Fraction’s terribly static, emotionally devolved Tony Stark after seeing Downey’s dynamic Tony Stark live and quip and kick major butt in the Avengers movie. Inspiration came hard and I started writing… this… whatever it is. 
> 
> For the continuity conscious out there, bear in mind I am not touching AvX or Fear Itself with a ten foot pole. This is in a nebulous “Stark Resilient” setting pre-betrayal, post-Dark Reign, post-Siege, post-Prime well pre those later events, and just skimming in before Heroic Age really gets going (because contrary to ‘comic book time’ things should take a little while to shake out after an enormous cluster-fuck like Dark Reign/Siege ends) so it’s Commander Rogers still untangling Osborn’s crap before he gets the teams quite running again (though I’m using the “pick who you want except Thor or Iron Man” scene and the “give me a dollar” scene, because, reasons) and before Kang shows up to pee in the Avenger’s Cheerios and mess with heads again.
> 
> Also, please note this is NOT the savvy Natasha Stark from Earth-3490 who married Captain America to stop the Civil War. This is Antonia Eleanor Stark of Earth-3621 (undiscovered) who is just as alone and messed up as her male counterpart on Earth-616.  
> \--------------------------------------------------

He was in the middle of a sticky engineering problem when the call came through on a secure line. Not the Avengers line, but the SHIELD one. Which meant he was more than half-tempted to just ignore it and deal with them later. But, things were still tense there so he figured he’d better at least be polite.

“Tony Stark,” he answered absently, his mind still more than half-focused on the designs spread out on the monitors before him. He had blocked the video feed automatically, not wanting to lose his place on the stubborn circuit diagram that was giving the brake system the power-feedback problem he was trying to smooth out.

“Lose something and forget to call us again, Stark?” Maria Hill demanded, her tone distinctly annoyed. He blinked once and frowned into the air over his monitors, concentration broken.

“What are you talking about, Hill?”

“One of your precious suits. Someone steal one and you forget to let us know?”

He straightened up sharply, saving his work and banishing it from the screen to pull up the attached video feed. Her familiar annoyed frown greeted him.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said, frowning too as he ran a quick security check on every version of the suit he still had stored in his workshops and armories. Threw in War Machine and Rescue too, just to be sure. They all responded green: untouched and secure. “Nope, all accounted for. Why?”

Maria’s expression went from annoyed to grim in an instant. “Because I have reports of one hovering over the middle of the reservoir in Central Park right now, and it’s not responding to requests for contact.”

The Iron Man suit was already shifting into place around him as he rose to his feet. “I’m on my way. Don’t let anyone get close to it.”

“Affirmative. Coordinates sent. See you shortly,” Maria replied, but he’d already tuned her out as he dashed for the exit, barely acknowledging the startled looks his people shot after him. But he was suited up, so they didn’t shoot any awkward questions after him. They were getting more used to his sprinting out on Avenger’s business, even if the Avengers weren’t actually up and running again. It helped that Pepper was out for the afternoon, scaring up more investors. Her pointed questions would have been much harder to dodge.

His mind ran through the possibilities for what this random suit could be. Not one of his. Not that he knew – he was pretty sure he’d accounted for his entire armory after that whole on-the-lam mess, but maybe he could have missed one. Somewhere--- no. No. It had to be a deception. Some villain at work pretending to be Iron Man. He mentally ran through the most likely candidates, dismissing most of them outright. Someone new? Whatever or whoever it was, he certainly didn’t need anyone trashing what little was left of his good name in a knock-off suit. Stark Resilient was still too fragile for that. His status with Steve… with the Avengers still far too tentative. Tony fought down a surge of panic as he took to the sky, heading for New York.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

~*~

Even though the silently hovering suit was 100 meters above the middle of the reservoir, SHIELD had evacuated the Park around the reservoir all the way to the bounding streets and the transverse roads, effectively cutting the park in half and pissing off a lot of tourists, as well as annoying the exercise nuts forced off the surrounding jogging trails. It was going to be a PR nightmare for SHIELD if it went on too much longer, Tony knew. Not that he had to deal with those issues any longer – thankfully. Black helicopters and agents in equally black suits milled around the secured perimeter, keeping both the disgruntled and the gawkers away.

It wasn’t far enough for safety – if this really was a trap –, but it would have to do, Tony noted unhappily. Clearing Manhattan itself might not be far enough, actually.

He hovered in mid-air in his own suit and stared at the strange red-and-gold suit floating opposite him. It looked like one of his suits, all right, but not one he remembered building. Not that exact one anyway. It was definitely a pre-Extremis type, with the thicker, far less form-fitting armor plating that rendered the suit more robot-like than man-like. There were sometimes odd spots of blankness in his memory – the restore of his brain and memories had been complex, hurried and not apparently 100% accurate. Aside from that whole deliberately missing year, older memories, he’d been dismayed to find, had been affected sometimes too. It was possible he could have built this suit and just forgotten it. He looked closer, hoping to jog his memory, while his own suit’s sensors scanned the anomaly carefully.

It looked very much like one of his… but… okay, maybe it wasn’t. It was close, but not exactly like his designs of that time. For one, the whole torso and chest-plate were slightly less detailed than he had been prone to making his at that time, and certain features were slightly off about the joints. The articulation looked… slightly more effective. Hm. He’d have to try out that variation himself on Rescue and War Machine.

It was also, his sensors summarized for him, three inches shorter overall than his own average suit design of that era. Odd, but not that unusual. He’d had shorter suits from time to time when playing with different thruster configurations, though, after a moments closer scrutiny, he realized the shortness wasn’t in the boots, but in the overall dimensions. This one was more compact than his own… as if it had been designed for a slightly shorter person. But the only other person to use the Iron Man had been Rhodey. Who was actually half an inch taller than he was. War Machine was usually a lot bigger than the Iron Man simply due to sheer armoring anyway. While Rescue was – due to Pepper’s slighter form – much shorter and more lightly armored. Rescue was almost five inches shorter… hm.

No, with those colors it was definitely intended to copy an Iron Man suit. Warily he attempted to contact the strange suit through his own usual back channels. Wasn’t terribly surprised to be soundly rebuffed by its security. Though it was odd that it didn’t even answer with a self-identity of any kind – no model or version even to accompany the virtual finger it gave him. A blank Iron Man?

Definitely not one of his then. Best to assume it was a trick or a trap of some kind.

But then… why was it just hovering there? Apparently it had been there for at least a little while before SHIELD detected it and – once Hill had called him – it had taken him a little more than an hour to get here pushing Mach 3 all the way from Seattle, the strange suit hadn’t moved in that whole time. Not to attack or taunt or set off a weapon or anything.

Wait, Tony thought suddenly, breath sucking in, could it be empty? He scanned the odd suit for life signs, found himself blocked again. Jamming of some kind. Or deeper shielding than he was used to using. Well then. Interesting. Those weren’t standard features of his suits.

“So. Is it one of yours?” Maria Hill asked over his com just as her video feed popped up in the upper right corner of his HUD.

“I’m… well, yeah, probably. It might have been modified,” he answered, frowning at it. If it had… The idea that someone had put their hands that deep into one of his suits made him decidedly unhappy. “It hasn’t transmitted anything? At all?”

In the corner of his HUD Maria shook her head. “No. Though it could have made noise when it first showed up and we just missed it, it certainly hasn’t made a peep since. There wasn’t an inbound track -- not by ATC or satellite. It’s as if it just appeared there… or stealthed its way in.”

“That’s… possible,” he said warily, narrowing his eyes at the other suit. “There’s extensive shielding in place on it. I can’t even tell if there’s anyone inside it.”

Maria looked to the side, then back toward the camera, obviously checking with the techs around her. “We can’t either.” SHIELD had lost all their low-level telepaths to the House of M. “But if there is someone inside it, why aren’t they talking?”

“Unconscious?” he offered.

“Sometimes it’s just that simple?” Maria offered wryly, her brows rising.

Tony laughed. “Yeah, I don’t buy it either.”

“How untrusting of you, Stark.” Her answering smile was shark-like.

“Pragmatic,” he said carelessly, drifting closer to the other suit. “I’m going to try direct contact now. See if that stirs anything up.”

Maria frowned but didn’t offer any useless cautions. SHIELD couldn’t afford to let the thing stay there in the middle of Central Park any more than he could.

He circled around the suit as he approached, looking for possible damage on every side with every sensor and test he had in his own suit. Something subtle to maybe help explain why the other suit was so silent. But he found nothing unusual. Some slight scraping of paint, as if it had been in combat, but no real damage.

It was operating, of course. Holding a stationary position with ease. Holding itself in the air much like he was right now, only in mirror. Which meant it wasn’t completely motionless, the hands and feet shifting just enough to hold its relative position over the water. Autopilot programming. After a careful visual scan he spotted concealed diagnostic access ports under the right arm. That wasn’t his usual place for them, but he’d been known to put them there sometimes. Normally he preferred the thigh or the forearm for easy self-access, but it depended on what he’d designed a particular suit to do.

Or to withstand. This one looked tough. Very tough.

He drifted slowly into arm’s reach. Waited a few seconds more for a reaction. Got nothing. So, taking a slow breath, he reached out and laid his own armored hand on the forearm of the suit.

A burst of high-gain static seared into his systems unchecked, snowing his HUD and sending him reeling back from the other suit with a violent jerk. Pain spiked into his brain. _Contact defenses!_ He had the time to think through the agony as control of his own suit started to slip away from him. He tumbled out of the sky even as he frantically tried to re-boot his own suit through the pain throbbing in his temples.

Water rushed up at him. He was briefly glad he was over the reservoir instead of the ground. But not entirely. It was January after all. The water was icy cold and his suit offline.

But his suit responded after a few seconds, re-forming around him and stabilizing him in the air a bare half meter above the water’s surface.

“—rk! Stark! What happened?!” Maria Hill demanded through his still-hissing comm.

“Defensive system!” he called out, his voice unsteady as he gasped for breath after the sudden pain, hoping he was actually transmitting. “Nobody touches it!” Now that his HUD was clearing and his suit responding again, he started an analysis of the attack that had managed to briefly short out his suit as he lay in the air below the other suit, staring up at it. It still hadn’t reacted at all. It just hovered there. No, it… wasn’t really an attack, he realized after a dazed moment. That burst had actually been highly compressed data. Focused and broadcast at high power levels. The whole suit was shouting out every byte of data it contained as a jumbled shower of noise, which, for some reason, wasn’t getting any further than the metal skin itself.

“We can just blow it up,” Maria Hill offered. So bloodthirsty. In small doses she was sort of cute, Tony thought. Not right now though.

“Not… a great idea, Hill,” he said, still a little breathless. The kind of power sources _he_ put in suits like this one tended to make big messes when they went up.

The data storm had to be caused by hidden internal damage in the suit of some kind. If he had tried to jack into the suit directly first… it might just have fried his own suit completely – and maybe even his brain. He needed something to both buffer and capture the data and maybe convince the other suit its data had been received so maybe it would stop transmitting. _If_ that was why it was transmitting in the first place…

He set his suit’s onboard systems to sorting out some of the data he’d managed to capture before overload. Then tried to figure out how to get through to the other suit. As he contemplated, pieces of the other suit’s information started blinking into place on his HUD. Stats. Readings. Biometrics.

“It’s manned, Hill,” he said, going suddenly grim. “Looks like it… oh shit.”

“What, Stark?”

His gaze stayed fixed on a distinctive data signature appended to one of the files. “Get Reed Richards online. I think it’s another other-dimensional _me_.”

~*~

The easy solutions were sometimes the best. They simply didn’t touch it. Susan Richards threw up a force field around the strange suit and towed it back to the Baxter Building behind the FantastiCar as Tony paced them in his own suit. He would have preferred to take it to his own lab in Avengers Tower, but had to concede that, in this situation, Reed’s lab had more of what they needed right on hand.

Mainly, his dimensional scanner.

Tony turned his suit back into street clothes as he entered Reed’s lab. He’d have to use remote systems to protect himself from the broadcast the other suit was doing anyway, he thought, but no sense tempting fate. Sue held the visitor’s suit immobile while Reed stretched and flowed rapidly around his lab, already re-programming sensors and running scans.

“Definitely an extra-dimensional intruder,” Reed said, frowning at a console readout. “But unfortunately it appears to be resonating within a dimensional arc I haven’t explored before.”

Which wasn’t really a surprise. There were billions upon billions of possible alternate universes out there anyway. Only Reed would take it as an affront that he couldn’t instantly identify their visitor’s source universe. But it also meant they had no idea what this version of Tony might be like. Iron Maniac was a memory he still retained. Unfortunately.

“Why do you think he isn’t talking to us, Tony?” Sue asked, frowning up at the immobile suit.

“Probably unconscious,” he said, fist pressed to his mouth as he pondered it. Though the suit looked intact. It had some minor cosmetic damage around the hands and forearms, knees and thighs, as he’d already noted, but nothing extreme. It was consistent if the other Tony had gone hand-to-hand with someone – or something – but not one of unreasonable strength. “But if he has any kind of a direct-brain link to his suit’s systems like I do… his brain might have been fried by the data being screamed out by his own suit.”

Sue shot him a horrified look. “Then we’ve got to get him out of there,” she said. Reed stretched his neck around and shot Tony a brief look that clearly said, _you or me_?

Tony sighed and rubbed a hand over his neck. This was his worst nightmare come true. He felt for his other-self but… “Sue, the broadcast has been going for more than two hours on our side of the dimension alone— we have no way to know how long it was going before that. Any damage is long done. His brain won’t get any more scrambled than it might already be and I’d rather not risk one of us to find out.”

“Well, thanks for that vote of confidence in my tech, brother,” came a raspy, hollow-sounding voice from the suit. It was followed by a harsh cough. They all turned in surprise as one of the hands of the other-dimensional Iron Man suit lifted and tapped at the ports under the other arm. “Don’t worry, I just shut it down. Guess it worked. Sort of. You can let me down now, Jo- um… oh, hey.”

Sue glanced between Reed and Tony for confirmation, her brows raised. Reed shrugged even as Tony nodded. She lowered the suit until it stood on the floor and dropped her force field. The other Iron Man staggered a little on his feet, then steadied himself.

“Ugh. Remind me to avoid falling into inter-dimensional vortexes in the future would you?” The faceplate of the suit snapped up and Tony gaped at the occupant.

“Oh my,” Sue said, already grinning wickedly and glancing between them. Reed looked thoughtful for a moment then nodded and turned away as if it were no big deal.

Tony gaped more. Then found his voice. Somewhere. “Oh hell. I’m a girl.”

His other-dimensional self grinned at him wolfishly. Exactly the way he had smiled at his old Board of Directors when they were pissing him off.

“Woman, jerk,” she shot back at him as she lifted the helmet off her head, shaking out her short, dark hair in the same way he did. Once and business-like. Her eyes were the same color as his own. Her features familiar, yet distinctly feminine. Definitely no goatee though. And it looked like she might even be a few years younger than he was. Which made sense given the tech level of the suit. Interesting.

“Good to meet you, other-dimensional people. I’m Tony Stark, Iron Man,” she said, glancing around at them all. Her gaze seemed to freeze for a moment on Sue, disturbed by something, but then she shifted her gaze smoothly back to Tony.

“Yeah. Me too,” Tony said. She tucked the helmet under one arm, propped her free hand on her hip, and ran her gaze over him blatantly from head to toe.

“Figured. Hm. Not bad. I guess I make a decent enough guy,” she said lightly. Tony frowned at her and folded his arms over his chest.

“I’ll reserve judgment,” he shot back, annoyed. She just smiled, slow and warm and fake, and it was another shock to recognize his own PR grin again. “I bet you will, sport,” she said in purring tones. Then she winked at him. He mentally winced. And _that_ was his own press charm turned back on him. What a disturbing feeling.

“This is going to get confusing,” Sue said with a laugh, “if you’re both Tony.”

“You think that’s confusing, what are you doing with Johnny’s powers?” the other-him said sharply, turning to fix a suspicious stare on Sue.

“What?” Tony found himself saying while Sue looked distinctly taken aback by the touch of hostility in the other woman’s tone.

“Susan is the Invisible Woman here, and my wife,” Reed interjected firmly, his expression grave despite the fact that his elongated fingers were tapping away rapidly on a keyboard in front of him. “You’re in an alternate version of your reality, Stark. Try to keep in mind that people – and situations – won’t always be entirely as they are in your home dimension.”

“Okay, granted,” she said, her gaze still wary as she gave Sue a suspicious frown. “Still a bit thrown discovering I’m a man here, after all. I guess I should brace myself for even more changes.” Her expression shadowed for a moment, a frown drawing her brows down as she glanced around the lab. “So you three are it for the welcoming committee? I bust through dimensions and this is it? Frankly, I expected a few more of the Avengers to be on their toes here.” 

“We’ll play catch-up later,” Tony said, drawing his female doppelganger’s attention back to him again sharply. “What are you doing here? And is there an inter-dimensional enemy on your tail who might follow you through?”

A wry look crossed her face as she gave him a side-long glance. “Okay, you really are me,” she said, shifting to set her helmet down on a console nearby. “That might make this a little easier.” She flicked the catches on the gauntlets and tugged them off too. Her hands were long-fingered, strong, and scarred just like his own had been from years of metalworking before Extremis. There was no polish on her short, practical nails, no rings on her fingers. Her ears were bare of ornament as well. Practical. Very practical. “Well, it shouldn’t be _able_ to follow me, because if things went the way we calculated, after I stunned it for a second using the contact-data overload, it’s now trapped back in a micro-dimensional bubble ‘verse, but I really wasn’t planning to end up tossed into a separate reality by the back-lash either, so, I don’t actually _know_ that it worked.”

Tony listened to her lie to them through the frustration in her tone and contemplated her through narrowed eyes for a moment as Reed started babbling questions about what she’d been fighting, dimensional resonance readings, and if she thought the bubble universe holding their baddie was stable. But before she could reply to any one of Reed’s questions Tony interrupted.

“Bullshit,” he said, shaking his head at her. “Getting tossed out of your reality was a known part of your plan.” Her dark blue gaze shifted to him wryly.

“I can see this is going to get really annoying very quickly,” she said, returning his narrow stare exactly. “And no, not _part_ of it, guy-me, I just knew it was a very high probability. I couldn’t let the thing keep tearing up the world like that. Innocent people were dying. Ste-- Avengers were already hurt. As team lead it was my call to make.”

He flinched slightly in reaction, catching the change she made mid-word clearly. And he saw her catch his flinch in return, her gaze hard, her expression going cool. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sue shift a little uneasily as well and realized she’d picked up on the broken off name too. Apparently Captain America had been wounded and this female version of him had blown herself into another reality to keep him safe. He couldn’t suppress a fierce sense of relief that ran through him over that because Tony knew Steve Rogers – no matter the reality – and he wouldn’t give up on a fight even injured or grossly overmatched. And this woman clearly understood that too. Which meant Steve Rogers mattered to her just the way he mattered to him.

Because she’d done something reckless to protect him. Just like he would have.

But would her Steve blame her for it? Or thank her? Because she was a woman?

For a moment, he could visualize the ways Steve might thank her. And Tony hated her in that moment with every fiber of his being. Then the hatred settled back into the deep, curdling sense of envy that had spawned it where he did his best to stomp it firmly flat. It didn’t matter. Her Steve was not his Steve. She was watching him impassively. But he knew she had figured out something of what he was thinking and feeling. Her carefully blank expression told him that much.

Reed broke into the uncomfortable atmosphere with his usual lack of care. “Do you know who it was you were fighting?”

“Yeah,” the woman who was him in another dimension said, dragging her gaze away from Tony’s slowly. “It was an incredibly powerful energy being that got curious about sentient organic life after being freed from a pocket dimension by some reckless idiot armed with a particle splitter and one of your bleeding-edge multi-verse theory papers. It didn’t _have_ a name at first, but eventually it started calling itself the Beyonder.”

Reed, Sue and Tony all sucked in alarmed breaths. Their visitor glanced between them all significantly.

“Okay. I see you people know that name. This is not boding well,” she said, planting her bare hands on the hips of her suit. “Maybe you should tell me everything you know about this thing from your side of reality so I can get a better idea if my team is still seriously screwed or not.”

“This is the first time you’ve encountered the Beyonder?” Tony asked grimly. She nodded, her gaze still sharp. “Did he take a bunch of your heroes and villains off Earth? Put you on a constructed planet and tell you to duke it out for good and evil and his general amusement?”

“No,” she said, looking faintly puzzled at first, then focused as she absorbed the implications. “It was dropping significant and hostile alien forces into major population centers world-wide and taunting humanity collectively as we scrambled to contain them.”

Tony glanced between Reed and Sue. Sue looked angry and a little frightened by the news, he saw her glance up briefly toward the living floors where Franklin and Valeria probably were right now. Reed just shrugged and looked contemplative. “It is another dimension entirely, Tony, if still associated with our multi-verse. They obviously have a version of that same pocket-universe that spawned our Beyonder attached to their own with an intact variant. And for some reason he decided to play with that reality in a slightly different way.”

“So you think you managed to put him back in his bottle?” Tony demanded of his alternate-self. She looked as grim as Reed now. 

“That was the plan,” she said carefully. “Richards… uh, my universe’s Richards, Pym, McCoy, T’challa, Lensherr, Banner, Doom and I figured that would be the only way to stop it from using us as its playground and reverse a chunk of the damage.”

Tony blinked at her as he realized what else they had to have done. “So you used a limited time loop device linked to his own powers on him too.”

“Quit that,” she said seriously, leveling a finger at him in warning. “You are starting to piss me off, Mr. Other-Dimension Me. How the hell did you figure _that_ out?”

“Because we discussed trying that ourselves. We couldn’t make it work with the restricted resources we had on Battleworld. But… he took us off Earth for his games, while yours left you here. Maybe with our own equipment…”

“If I’d had access to my lab then definitely, Tony, yes,” Reed interrupted, looking thoughtful and intrigued.

“Then there would have been no need for anyone to assume the powers to reverse the effects either,” Sue added, looking less ill and stressed. She hadn’t been taken to Battleworld with the rest of the FF, but she’d certainly been briefed on what Doom had done after they returned. And the idea of someone unknown and potentially unstable charged up with the Beyonder’s abilities wandering the multiverse had given Tony a brief sick turn too.

“You’re kidding me,” his female self said, her horrified gaze bouncing between them, “someone over here took on those powers? And you’re still _around_.”

“Yeah, well, it was complicated,” Tony said, rubbing a hand over his close-cut hair. She was wearing hers barely longer than his was. “And very… recursive. But yeah, we got out of it partly that way.”

Reed made a noncommittal noise. “The most important thing to focus on here now is determining if your Beyonder made it into that pocket-universe or if the error that sent you here made him fell through dimensions as well. Of course, I’ll have to determine your home resonance arc first to start my search. I’ve notated this segment of the multi-verse as ‘616’ – depending on how far away your dimension is from this one could make it more difficult to return you without a significant influx of cosmic energy.”

Tony Stark, female, looked offended. “Our calculations weren’t _that_ shoddy, Reed, for pity’s sake. You did them yourself. I wasn’t the target focus, just the delivery device and _I delivered_. It’s either locked in that dimensional Pandora’s Box again, or it’s still dropping Viderian shock-troops into Central Park, and if it _is_ , that would really piss me off since I just had the landscaping at the Mansion re-done _again_ to Jarvis’ specifications after Kang paid us a visit last month.”

Kang. Mansion. Jarvis. Her armor style. Their first Beyonder visit. Yeah, Tony thought to himself bitterly, her dimension was lagging behind theirs by at least a few years. And was it self-indulgent that his first thought wasn’t how to stop the Beyonder, but how to warn her to watch for the SHRA legislation and the Skrull threat that could already be building in her future? How to warn her in a way that she’d actually listen to, and not brush off in the heat of her current crisis?

Reed was stretching his arms in two directions across his lab toward separate pieces of equipment. “I need to re-calibrate several dimensional scanners first based on my initial readings, then I’ll eventually need to do a full quantum and molecular scan of both you and your armor, Tony, as samples, to narrow the range to higher-probability search segments.” He twisted his head around like an owl and frowned at them all. “This could take a few hours at least. Maybe a day.”

“Need any help, Reed?” Tony asked, folding his arms. His female counterpart raised a brow at him.

“No, Tony, the re-calibration is delicate and I know my own equations and equipment best. It would be more helpful if you kept a watch out for the possibility that the Beyonder followed our guest here.”

Female-him threw her hands up in disgust. “Look, it was a combat situation, people were getting hurt… and I was the one who made the call on the timing, but the device _worked_ , Reed – activation is what threw me through the dimensional vortex in the first place, not failure.”

“Well, given the low-impact way you got spit out here, it _would_ be more likely for it to fall into a dimension nearer to yours instead of making it all the way to this one if your trap was only a partial successful,” Tony said before Reed could, frowning at the floor. “Hopefully into one with heroes available to fight it.” And wasn’t that a cheerful thought – a version of himself loosing a cosmic-level menace on an unsuspecting reality that might or might not have heroes capable of handling it. He looked sidelong at his female counterpart but she’d already gone tense over the idea. Her gaze met his. Held. Then her face went impassive with only a touch of sneer. Yeah, he knew that look. The “you can’t prove I fucked up so I’m bulling through anyway” look.

“Potentially, but a hypothesis best verified,” Reed said, but it was clear he was already distracted by his equipment, his calculations and the puzzle at hand, his body stretching everywhere to make adjustments, to switch machines on. “I’ll be scanning for that possibility too, of course.”

Tony sighed. Pinched the bridge of his nose, mentally cursing those long months as Director of SHIELD that had made him hyper-aware of just how fragile Earth’s defenses actually were. “Yeah yeah, but the more people at least on alert here the better.” Tony sighed again over the thought of visiting Luke Cage to tell him he needed his people to watch out for a cosmic being. Luke hated that stuff – almost as much as he still hated Tony. And he’d have to fill in SHIELD too. Which meant Commander Rogers would be called in.

“I’ll take care of it, Reed. Thanks for the assist, Sue.” She waved him off almost as absently as Reed had, staring up with a small frown at her husband winding himself throughout his lab. “Okay…” He couldn’t call her Tony. “Me-with-breasts, let’s go ruin some Avengers’ afternoons.”

“Nice,” she said, eyeing him scornfully from toes to hair as she picked up her gauntlets again and slipped them on. “So is this what it’s like to have a brother? I’m reminded again why I’m _glad_ I was an only. I’ll just be calling you dick-boy then.” He grinned wolfishly back at her as he waited for her to pick up her helmet then led her toward the elevators. “So, where’s your armor, dick-boy? Because I know you have to be Iron Man too.”

“I am. And, this is definitely rubbing it in, but,” he called his suit and it formed around him out of his street clothes. “I think I’m just a few years ahead of you here.” She watched the suit move into place with a greedy gaze, the covetous look in her eyes making him feel slightly better. At least his tech blew hers away.

“God damn. I want that,” she said, practically drooling as she examined the shoulder articulation and the neck joins.

He watched her through his open faceplate. Pondered risks. Figured it was inevitable anyway. Made a choice. “You know Maya Hansen in your dimension?”

She frowned at him, shifting her helmet under her arm as they both thumped into the roomy elevator. It had been designed to hold Ben Grimm; two armored suits were nothing. “I do. Been years though – since just post-college I think.”

Tony grimaced as he punched the button for the top floor of the Baxter Building. Well, that was eerily close to his own life too. “She into HMI? Wetware? Nanotech?”

“I may have read a paper or two she wrote on something like that, yes,” she allowed warily, still trying to reverse-engineer his suit with her eyes. Analyzing and memorizing, breaking it down and trying to figure out how to work what she saw as possible for her own use, he knew. It was exactly what he’d have been doing in her position.

Tony leaned back against the wall of the elevator as it sped upwards. “When you get back, check up on her more thoroughly. See if she’s working on something called the ‘Extremis enhancile’. She might be a few more years away from it than she was here, but, if you know what’s good for you,” and here he laughed painfully, “you’ll buy it up and shut that whole damn project down.” 

“Even though it got you to that suit,” she pointed out, still looking at it covetously. And the familiar obsessed gleam – the one he saw reflected in every sigh Pepper gave him, every roll of Rhodey’s eyes, every tightening of Steve’s lips – was in her eyes now. It was like looking at himself in a Fun House mirror; she was undeniably _him_ , but warped. At least physically. Mentally… he was starting to wonder. What had he really been like before the SHRA and his own mistakes and the Skrulls ripped the trust and faith and camaraderie of the superhero community to shreds? Before that indefinable _something_ he hadn’t realized he’d come to depend on so heavily had been destroyed? And what toll would it have taken on him for him to do the myriad of things he’d done over his busy life – both good and bad – as a woman instead? Genius inventor or not? In the average world, the glass ceiling still definitely existed. Pepper made sure he stayed on top of that fact.

“It got a lot of people dead, or permanently pissed off at me, too,” he said grimly, struggling with his memories, his thoughts. “But yeah, some of it led to this.”

The elevator opened onto the roof of the Baxter Building. She put her helmet on as he let his flow into place. “I’m going to ask you about that night-light in your chest eventually too, dick-boy, don’t worry,” she said over the com. “You have SHIELD here I assume?”

He launched, his female version hot on his heels. Turned himself toward the Mansion.

“Yes, we have SHIELD,” he said ruefully as his HUD lit up with an incoming call from Hill. “Hold on a sec.” He switched over to private mode. “It’s definitely another me, Hill, but non-hostile and cooperative. Came here accidentally as a side effect of dealing with something big and ugly on their side.”

On his HUD Maria’s brows rose and her lip curled. “And you believe yourself, of course.”

He gave her a tight grin. “Well, Richards is convinced too.”

That bit of information didn’t seem to reassure her all that much. Her lips thinned. “Damn, that means two Tony Starks loose in Manhattan. I think I might swoon.”

“Maria Hill? Really? Did Dugan finally retire or did you shoot him, Hill?” His HUD snowed slightly as his other-self hacked into the channel, her tone dry as dust. “Well, looks like SHIELDs overall high unpleasantness factor is universal.” He should have known he – uh, she wouldn’t let herself be excluded. He wouldn’t have, as irritating as it was to have his systems hacked. And damn, she’d done that quickly. But he was damn good at what he did no matter how backwards the dimension he came from, he thought with some visceral satisfaction.

At least he had the pleasure of seeing Maria Hill speechless for once. She blinked at the video feed for a full five seconds in shock before it turned into a glare and she spat, “A woman? You want me to believe you’re a _woman over there_?” Then she burst into loud, edgy laughter. “Not on your playboy ego, Stark!”

The other Stark frowned. “Jesus, she’s exactly like my dimension’s Hill. How comforting to know her special brand of paranoid skepticism carries over.”

Hill was still chuckling and shaking her head. If he’d been a lesser man he might have been offended by her continued laughter but he’d hashed out his sexual identity long ago in the harsh crucibles of Ty and Sunset and it would take someone far more important to him than Maria Hill to shake it now. Like… he shut that thought down grimly and gave his other-self a small smile. “We do what we can around here with what we have. Hill, quit laughing already and listen; we may have a dimensional breech involving another universe’s Beyonder. ”

Hill sobered at once, all business. “Shit.”

“The likelihood is fairly low,” his female self snorted her disgust again, “but it doesn’t hurt to have SHIELD on alert for the possible appearance of a cosmic-level entity.”

“Why does all the really weird crap follow you around, Stark?”

“A charmed life,” he replied drily as he maneuvered through the familiar New York skyline toward Central Park. “I’m inbound to the Avengers to get them up to speed. The FF are already full up on the situation. You on civil terms with any of the X-teams at all?”

“You know we aren’t,” Hill said grimly. “I’ll inform Commander Rogers. He can deal with them.”

Tony grimaced. “Yeah, that’s probably best.” Not that Steve and Summers got along all that well either, but Summers would probably give him a fair listen instead of just hanging up on him outright. Logan would definitely hear him out.

“Hill out.” Maria’s image flicked off and he was left facing his female self’s dark frown on the HUD alone.

 _“Commander Rogers_? Not Captain America?”

He met her flat, suspicious gaze steadily. “Things happened. He’s not carrying the shield anymore.”

“I have a hard time believing that,” she said.

He closed his eyes briefly. “Yeah, you and me both.”

~*~

He led them to the front yard of the Mansion rather than to any of the roof-top landing pads. She followed him without question, oddly silent. Gathering data, he knew, and began mentally preparing himself for when she finally thought she had enough and started… being him, for lack of a better way to think of it. Steeling himself for what was coming at the Mansion first, he retracted his helmet once he was on the ground and waited patiently.

It didn’t take long for the front door to slam open and a furious Luke Cage to appear. Thankfully, Jessica was on his heels, little Dani in her arms, Danny Rand in his full Iron Fist costume at her side. Tony knew final team selections were due in a week, Commander Rogers orders, but Cage’s immediate circle had already moved back into the Mansion. Tony had already passed the dollar Cage paid him for the title transfer of the Mansion on to Steve. As a good luck charm for both teams. Not that he believed in luck.

“Get your ass the hell off my lawn, Stark,” Cage said with a curl of his lip. “And take that junior knock-off there with you.”

Oh he bet that burned her. He kept his own expression bland with effort. “Avengers business, Cage.”

Luke just glared at him, massive arms folded over his chest. “You’re Rogers’ problem not mine. Fuck off.”

“Well, this is certainly mind-bending,” female-him said drily through her helmet. “You remodeled and then sold the Mansion to Luke Cage. God I really don’t want to know why do I? But let me add to the fun.” She lifted her helmet off and smiled toothily at Luke who blinked back at her blankly.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded. Jessica gasped while Danny Rand glanced between Tony and female-him only once before he started to shake his head.

“Tony Stark,” she said and turned on his best corporate smile. “Iron Man. Leader and financier of the Avengers. Chairman of the Board and CTO of Stark International.”

“From another reality,” Tony added, not bothering to smile.

Cage threw up his hands in disgust. “Fuck me! Two Starks now.”

“But one’s a woman,” Danny Rand said, laughing silently Tony could tell. “An attractive one too.”

“Oh I don’t know, I’m kinda into this whole goatee thing boy-me’s got going here. I think it’s hot. Don’t you?” other-him said with a wink and a flirty grin for Danny. Who looked briefly taken aback before he flushed. Cage’s glare just deepened, if that was possible.

Jessica Jones, on the other hand, grinned broadly as if someone had just told her Christmas was coming early this year, while jiggling a silent, wide-eyed, fist-eating Dani on her hip. “Oh this is too, too good. Does Cap know yet?” Tony shot her a quelling look, while his female self narrowed her gaze on her too.

“He’s being informed,” Tony said, then turned back to Luke. “This isn’t a social call, Cage. When this Iron Man came through it was after fighting the Beyonder of her dimension. It’s possible, if unlikely, that their Beyonder followed. We’re alerting everyone just in case.”

“I told you the Beyonder is _trapped_. It’s just me who got spit across dimensions,” female-him said again, glaring at him. “I knew the risks, and our device worked, this was just one potential side-effect.” He shrugged and turned back to the three heroes watching them dubiously.

Luke sighed loudly and rubbed both big hands over his face, glaring at them through his spread fingers. “That’s some cosmic-level bullshit right there. Oh hell, she must really be Stark. Listen to that crap coming out of her mouth. Just like him.”

“Beyonder?” Danny Rand asked warily. Jessica frowned in concern, a hand spreading protectively over little Dani’s back.

“Details of his powers and abilities are in the Mansion database,” Tony continued heavily, their distrust weighing on him. “Look him up and keep an eye out. Steve will need you to be ready if the Beyonder does show up.”

“For Rogers, yeah,” Cage said gruffly. “Until then keep you and your girl-self out of my way, Stark.”

Tony nodded, ordered his helmet back into place and launched himself into the air leaving the other heroes behind in the yard of the building that had once been his happiest home. It took a few minutes before his female-self followed. He had paused in the air over the Park to wait for her, ignoring the tourists who pointed up at him and snapped pictures, letting his mind run over circuit designs and power capacity ratios for his cars instead to soothe himself the while.

“You going to explain to me why they hate you – and me by association?” she said as her suit drifted into his line of sight. The dated design of it made him remember other days. Better days. And he wasn’t the kind of man who spent much time looking backwards. His view was forward. Always forward. Wasn’t it?

“No, I’m not.”

He knew she was probably already busy hacking local news archives. Gathering information. She’d find out everything that was public knowledge soon enough, and then go looking for the rest besides. Including the coverage of Steve’s assassination, funeral and eventual return. He didn’t feel like softening the news for her at all – he’d learned it the same way too.

They hovered over Central Park for a moment longer in silence before she demanded harshly, “Tell me at least Steve doesn’t hate you too.”

Of course she asked that. He closed his eyes for a moment inside his suit and took a deep breath. “Hard to believe, but no, he doesn’t hate me.”

Her voice was hard. Cold. Bitter. “But he doesn’t really trust you anymore.”

Ah. Right to the core of it. She really _was_ him. “No. No he doesn’t.”

~*~

While he didn’t have full legal possession of Avengers Tower again yet, he did have access. It was still probably the best place to take his other-dimensional self, Tony decided reluctantly. Commander Rogers was in the process of returning the Tower to him legally, but a few Senators were still balking over the fact that while Tony had been Director, he’d used SHIELD resources and manpower to get the Tower repaired faster. He’d paid SHIELD back later, in full, but that little breech of operating protocol had given Osborn the legal loophole he needed to seize it for HAMMER in the first place. Crews were lined up to start renovations in full as soon as that hurdle was cleared; all legal rules were being followed closely this time. Commander Rogers had insisted. To make certain there would be no question of the Tower’s ownership ever again in the future. It was a consideration Tony wasn’t quite sure he deserved, but he’d take it to have his property back again.

Still, he’d already put a lab back in there. It was much closer than his lab in Seattle too. And he had enough equipment cleared of Osborn’s viruses and spyware re-installed in there to give Reed some assistance getting his other-self back where she belonged, whether Reed wanted the help or not.

As they flew up the streets toward Avengers Tower she let out an annoyed sound. “What the hell is that on the roof?”

“Heimdal’s Observatory.” He didn’t much care for the latest addition to his building either, but he certainly didn’t miss the Watchtower at all.

“And why isn’t Heimdal in Asgard? Or is that something _else_ you’re expecting me to dig out of the news archives?”

His patience finally snapped. Along with his temper. “Look, this isn’t your reality, and this isn’t your world, and even if your name is Stark and you’re your universe’s version of me over there, _this_ _isn’t your life_. You’re going back to your own world just as soon as I can boot your shiny metal butt through the correct portal, lady. So you don’t need to know what’s going on here, _Tony Stark_ , or anything about my life, you just need to get gone.”

“It’s bad then,” she said quietly, almost under her breath, but he still heard her clearly through the com. “Worse than waking up under a foot of snow in an alley too drunk to remember my own phone number bad.”

And his gut jumped at her words. Because they meant she’d been there too. Brought low by her own hand, her own guilt, her own crazy-high expectations and unreal standards that she can’t afford to let slip because she’s Tony Stark and so much depends on her genius and her skill and her control. And he doesn’t want to know how she got out of it. If she finally called Steve or if she clawed her way out on her own like he did. Doesn’t want to hear what might have happened between them because she’s not him and she’s a _she_ and what the fuck is his life anymore anyway when the multi-verse shoves the potential of everything he already knows _he_ _doesn’t deserve_ right in his face like this?

“Yeah,” he said reluctantly, swallowing bile. “Worse than that.”

She finally went silent as they finished the approach to the top of the Tower, clearing the lip of the main roof, and _fuck him_ if that wasn’t a SHIELD helicopter sitting idle on his helipad and fuck him more if that wasn’t the blue-and-white of Commander Roger’s uniform waiting for them on the terrace below.

“Steve,” he heard her breathe over the com. It was a sound of pure relief he wished he could share.

He put on a burst of speed just to make sure he landed ahead of her, coming to a strolling stop in front of Steve and withdrawing his helmet only. Steve had his arms folded over the white star and bars on his chest, his legs spread in a neutral stance, no real expression on his face.

“So you heard already.”

“Tony.” Steve acknowledged him with a tiny nod, but his gaze was locked on the suit of armor just coming down behind him, his expression gone a mix of thoughtful and professionally cool.

She landed just like he landed, with obvious skill, taking one skipping step to shed the last bit of momentum before falling inhumanly still as only the armor could allow.

“Welcome to our dimension, Ms. Stark,” Steve said, his gaze fixed on the impassive eye slits of the helmet. Just as he’d always done with him. “So you think you left the Beyonder trapped and just need a way back home now?”

“It _is_ trapped, damn it, and while that’s a very flattering costume you have on there, it’s not really the one I expect to see you in, Cap,” she said through her speakers. And Tony caught the slight betraying hitch in her tone through the modulation, but he wasn’t sure Steve would. Or maybe he just hoped.

“I have a new job now, ma’am,” Steve replied calmly, his expression unchanged.

“One more important than there being a Captain America?” she shot back at him and Steve frowned slightly.

“We have a Captain America. He’s doing an excellent job,” Steve said quietly and Tony knew this was touchy ground because it was Bucky Barnes with the shield now but hell if he was going to warn other-him about that.

“I doubt that,” she said, reaching up for her helmet and shaking it free. “You were always the best at it.” But Tony made sure he was watching Steve as she pulled it off and witnessed the moment of shock, the startled parting of his lips, the quick flicker of his gaze to Tony, then back to the female-him again, and then the slight, inevitable softening of his gaze as it lingered on her face.

“The resemblance is uncanny,” Steve finally said, a note of wonder in his tone, and Tony’s gut churned harder. “Add in that armor and I can’t really argue that she’s anyone other than who she says she is.”

“Right. Just me with the wrong chromosome,” he said wryly, forcing a levity he didn’t feel into his tone.

“Hardly the wrong one,” she said sharply, her avid gaze locked on Steve. She was all but eating him with her eyes, Tony noted with a sick sense of fatality. God, get it under control, woman, he thought. Don’t be stupid in my world. “And _that’s_ why I was Iron Man first instead of this ‘Iron Woman’ bullshit the press likes to try to slap on me now that I’m public.”

“I’m sure Tony meant no offense, ma’am,” Steve said with a slight quirk of his lips and a nod of his head, “but you have to admit we’re used to it being the other way around over here. Him more than anyone else, of course.”

“No, I meant offense,” Tony said deliberately, relieved when the comment drew her attention back to him as an angry glare. “You’re in the wrong reality and need to go back.”

“Tony,” Steve said with mild rebuke.

“Oh, you don’t need to play referee for us, Steve,” she said, smiling at Tony wolfishly before letting her gaze soften as it drifted back to Steve. “Dick-boy there and I already understand each other perfectly.”

Steve blinked a little at her name for him, but didn’t otherwise react. “No, of course not, but I should have realized Tony’d have a hard time dealing with himself, or rather, with someone exactly like him. I’ll just let you two hash it out between yourselves then and stay out of the line of fire.”

Tony shot a sideways look at Steve, was alarmed to see a tiny grin on his face. He winced. “Oh god. I think you’re enjoying this.”

“Whatever gave you that idea,” Steve said mildly but the grin stayed in place as he let his arms fall to his sides. “This incident is an important security issue for our dimension, however. And it’s our responsibility to help our visitor get home again too.”

“Reed’s working on it,” Tony ground out. “But it’s going to take a little time.”

“Then we should probably offer to make our guest comfortable,” Steve said and gestured for her to precede them to the elevator that went down to the residence level. “Ma’am, after you?”

She stared at him in wry dismay for a moment before shaking her head ruefully and clomping toward the elevator in her jet boots, idly swinging her helmet in one gauntleted hand as she went. “Good Christ, I’d forgotten how annoying your best manners are, Steve. It took me almost half a year to drum that crap out of my Cap, but, thank God, he finally started yelling at me instead or I probably would have found a way to stick him back in the ice somehow over the last few years.”

“I’m sure I can’t imagine how you managed that, being Tony Stark and all,” Steve said, brows rising, mouth quirking, and Tony practically swallowed his own tongue in shock because Steve was clearly attempting to tease him and her at the same time.

She turned in the elevator and gave him a sly grin. “Oh, I just offered to…” and her gaze flickered down Steve’s body just enough for there to be no question of her real meaning, to Tony at least, “buy him a new car every time he called me ‘ma’am’. Shall we go? Before I give your Tony another heart attack by hacking his security for a second time?”

Steve laughed and shook his head and gestured for Tony to precede him too, and he’d never been more grateful for Steve’s sometimes slow uptake on social barbs than in that moment.

He shifted into the elevator car, near his other-self, leaned close and whispered to her quickly before Steve joined them. “Mess with him and I’ll end you, lady.”

Her dark blue eyes glittered at him through her lashes with equal malice as she whispered back. “I’m pretty sure I’d rather see you dead first, asshole.”

He glared at her as Steve joined them, punching the button for the main living floor.

They rode the elevator down in silence, Tony’s brain seething with all the things he wanted to yell at her for and wouldn’t with Steve present. Her expression was cool and composed. Probably a reflection of his own. He knew what he was like.

“Are you sure you two don’t need a referee?” Steve said into the thick silence just as the elevator doors slid open onto the Osborn-ravaged living levels.

“What the hell happened in here?” other-him blurted, staring around herself with wide, dismayed eyes.

While some of his personal items had been shipped out before the transition, Pepper had had more important things on her plate to manage at the time than keeping track of every little thing he owned. All the paintings of the Avengers that had once hung here were long destroyed, the vast open walls bare and sterile for their lack. Almost everything portable or breakable had been… stolen or broken. The furniture that remained looked sadly battered. The carpeting had been torn out on the whole level. Down to the concrete. The flat-screen in the main room was inert. The place was an echoing shadow of itself, now, all good associations completely buried beneath Osborn’s taint.

In the kitchen it was worse. Most of Jarvis’ pots, cutlery and dishware had been whittled down by Osborn’s fake Avengers. What was left was in poor shape and nothing would be done to get it back in order until Tony had full ownership again and complete security in place. Only then could Jarvis move back safely. Tony generally avoided the kitchen.

The Tower was a problem. He needed it for the team Steve wanted to form because the Mansion was allocated elsewhere now, but, it didn’t help matters that most of his remaining personal fortune was tied up in Stark Resilient. The Tower’s restoration was at least a little way off still, letting him build up a larger buffer of capital. It appeared as if Danny Rand was going to fund Cage’s part of the Avengers instead; which was good because Tony simply couldn’t afford to do it all these days. The Maria Stark Foundation had survived everything intact, at least, with Pepper as shell owner, but Tony was letting most of that continue to go toward repairing New York City after super-powered incidents.

“It’s a long story,” Tony said harshly, definitely not in the mood to tell it. Especially to her.

“The Tower left Tony’s ownership for a few months. He’s just getting it back,” Steve summed up easily, shooting him a warning look before favoring her with a less severe expression. “Ms Stark? Can you give us a moment?”

“Of course, Steve,” she murmured far too demurely, and clattered loudly across the bare floor in her jet boots toward the floor-to-ceiling main windows which had probably only escaped being broken because they were structural and not even supervillains were that reckless about places where they were actually expected to live.

Steve waited until she was out of regular earshot, even with the noise of her boots to drown them out. Then he turned to Tony with a frown. “That armor is a much older style of yours, isn’t it?” Steve said to him, both of them keeping their eyes on her as she moved warily around the virtually-empty living space. She was carrying her helmet in one hand, and had made no attempt to remove her gauntlets here, unlike in the Baxter Building. It was clear the state of the Tower disconcerted her. Tony wondered if she was living in it yet in her own world. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d moved in himself – if it had been before or after getting hauled off to Battleworld.

“A few years back in designs, yeah,” Tony agreed quietly. “This is their first encounter with the Beyonder, Steve.”

Sharp blue eyes shifted back to him. Narrowed. Considered. “Really? That far back?”

“Not all alternate realities are in time-sync with our own, or move through it at the same rate, but since theirs isn’t all that far off in events, relatively speaking, it means Reed can hopefully locate the dimensional range and get her sent back faster.”

“That’s good news. She doesn’t appear to be anything like the Iron Maniac either,” Steve said. And the less said about that by either one of them, the better, Tony thought. But it had been a concern lurking in the back of Tony’s mind too. So far she seemed stable, if a little sharper of tone than he might have considered being in her situation. Steve kept his gaze on him, brows lowered a little. “This is really bothering you, isn’t it? Her being a woman?”

“Not really,” Tony said with as relaxed a grin as he could manage, slipping his hands into his slacks pockets to hide how they wanted to go to fists. “All incoming jokes aside, I honestly don’t care if I’m a she over there, Steve, I just don’t like that “me” being _here_ instead of where that me belongs. They could need her expertise.”

“Iron Man is an excellent asset for any conflict, of course, but they have full hero teams too, Tony. Sue said she mentioned quite a few familiar names. So they should be able to beat the Beyonder even if her trap didn’t work exactly as she planned.” Steve nodded, grimaced slightly, then put a hand on Tony’s shoulder in a way that was meant to be reassuring. He still tensed slightly before he could stop himself. “And I’m sure they’re trying to find her too, Tony.” 

“I doubt it,” he said, with a deliberately casual shrug that didn’t dislodge Steve’s hand, knowing he was right even if it burned his own gut a bit to admit. “It would be like looking for a needle in an entire country of haystacks from their end. It’s going to be challenging enough for us to find her whole dimension, even being able to directly scan her resonance range, much less for them to search all the other possible universes for one suit of armor and a body out of dimensional resonance with its host. _I_ know that, so I’m damn sure she knows that too.”

Steve turned at last, finally pulling his hand away as he crossed his arms over his chest again. Tony took a steadying breath. “Then she’s our guest for the foreseeable future?”

“Reed’s on it, but yes.”

“You guys done talking about what to do about me over there yet?” she called from the far side of the room. “Because I have some suggestions.” She was staring out through the main windows, obviously comparing her memories of the New York skyline with what was visible here.

“No, we aren’t,” Tony called back baldly, and Steve shook his head at him reprovingly just as his communicator beeped.

“Rogers,” he answered it crisply. Listened intently for a moment without making any attempt to shift away for privacy. “Yes, I’ll be on my way there next, Hill. Thanks.”

“Trouble?” Tony asked, brows raised. Steve shook his head. “I don’t think so, but Logan’s out of contact and hasn’t been brought up to speed on the potential situation yet. I’ll have to drop over to Westchester and see if he ‘lost’ his Avengers alert badge again.”

“The Commander’s work is never done,” Tony said wryly as his other self clanked over to them, her jet boots not exactly stealthy on the raw concrete floor. For some unknown reason Osborn had pulled up all the carpeting and left it bare. Maybe because he’d had that unstable brat Daken pretending to be Wolverine in here and likely leaving blood all over the place.

“That it isn’t,” Steve said ruefully, clapping him on the shoulder again briefly. “So you’ve got this part under control?”

The woman spoke first. “’This part’ is thinking checking my armor for damage from the fight and crossover might be a good idea. Where’s your garage, Stark?” Then she added, looking faintly disappointed, “You’re on your way out, Steve?”

“Yes, duty calls,” he said, smiling slightly at her. Then Steve offered her his hand to shake despite the fact that she was still armored up. It never had bothered him to have a repulsor port that could potentially blow his hand off pressed against his palm when Steve did it with him either, Tony knew. “It was good to meet you, Ms Stark. We’ll get you back to your home dimension as quickly as we can.” She shook his hand with a small, wry smile of her own twisting her mouth.

“That would be ideal, but I know how Reed is so I won’t hold my breath,” she said casually enough, despite the hungry way she was looking at Steve again. “I’d like to be battle-ready for when Reed does find it though; I’m sure there will still be clean-up left to do at home.”

Steve let her hand go and paused, and Tony could see the multitude of questions he could still think to ask this female version of Tony starting to surface, and so Tony stepped in before they could. Or before she could open her mouth further either.

“Better check out Westchester, Steve,” he said, slapping his old friend on the shoulder heartily. “I think both the Iron Mans are going to hang around the Tower until Reed gets his calibrations done. I know he’ll want to scan her dimensional signature again at some point. Call if you need us.”

With a brisk nod to both of them, Steve turned on his heel and returned to the open elevator. After the door had shut Steve safely out of view, she turned to him and smirked.

“Meeee-ow, Stark.”

He hid his relief that Steve was safely away from her behind a grimace for the jibe, lifted an arm and a thumb toward the inner part of the residence. “The garage is this way.”

She gave a snort of annoyance. “I know where it is, I designed this place too.”

“Not on this side of reality,” he said wearily, turning away.”The main garage is still compromised so I had to put in a temporary one recently. Follow me.”

It took a moment but he heard the clump of her boots behind him finally as he walked down the inward flight of open stairs to the level two flights below and a room that had once been allocated as a decently sized auxiliary Avengers meeting room. The space was as large as a ballroom, windowless and set against the building’s core close to the services trunk for easy power and utilities access, but better yet, Osborn had only used it to store a few stacks of boxed records of his private transcripts. SHIELD had long ago carted all that away as evidence, and Tony had turned the room into a temporary garage and lab.

The old armor garage in the basement where Osborn had broken in and taken the Iron Patriot armor wasn’t trapped any more, but it was still bugged. He hadn’t had the time or inclination to scrub it clean yet. The new garage was already a familiar kind of mess, filled with haphazardly piled rescued projects, armor parts and systems, and repulsor test models. There were new computers installed here too; a network clean of both Osborn’s and SHIELD’s interference.

“Make yourself at home,” he invited with a careless wave of an arm, moving over to a test bench. He’d been meaning to come back from Seattle to pick up this variant repulsor mod he’d started on anyway. He fingered it where it lay on the surface in front of him without enthusiasm.

“Barely adequate,” she said, looking around the room with her nose slightly lifted in the way he did when he was in the presence of bad designs. Bravado, but then he recognized her need for that too. There were things in here she had to be dying to take apart to find out how he’d upgraded them.

“Good enough for you to work on that retro armor of yours in anyway,” he said dismissively, unable to resist the shot. Shooting him a dark look, she cleared a bench near a hoist on the other side of the room by simply sweeping her armor-clad arm across it and dumping everything – fragile or otherwise – off the far end and onto the floor. He rolled his eyes and leaned back against his own bench, folding his arms over his chest and wincing elaborately through the racket.

She set her helmet down, tugged off her gauntlets, and then he watched as she stripped the rest of the armor off, feeling an odd pang of nostalgia for a suit that needed his hands on it daily to maintain. He missed that. Missed working in the guts of a suit like that. Banging out dents. Tooling parts. Re-wiring. Upgrading. He got a decent dose of hands-on with Pepper’s Rescue armor, but it wasn’t the same as tuning a suit he would wear, tinkering with it for hours just to gain a few hundredths of a percent over maximum efficiency, just because he knew he could.

As she unlatched the chest piece and let it fall away, the difference took a moment to register with him. Then he was staring at her in grim surprise. He’d understood, somewhere in his mind, that she must have gone through a trial similar to his own in order to become Iron Man. Capture. Wounding. Failing heart. Imprisonment. Creation. Loss. Escape. But he could only stare at the familiar dark grey arc of metal, just visible above the line of her tank top collar, set into the ribs and heavily scarred flesh just to the left of her breastbone. She intercepted his stare with a flat, faintly amused, one of her own.

“It’s an artificial heart,” she said. “Part of it is alien tech, but it works.”

“I know what it is. I had one like that once too. But that’s… a lot of damage,” he said, gesturing toward her very conspicuously missing left breast.

She sniffed once, expression bland and looked down at the flat expanse of that side of her chest. Shrugged. “When it’s a choice between filling out a bikini top or living to kick your enemy’s ass, I figured it was a pretty obvious choice to make.”

He thought of Yinsen saving her too, inspiring her to change, helping her to become Iron Man, and his throat ached with old regrets.

“Plastic surgery?” he asked, even though he knew what the answer had to be, gaze locking with hers briefly. Neither of them trusted most doctors. Or permitted themselves to stay in a hospital any longer than absolutely necessary. There was no tolerance for pity in her steady return gaze. She was harder than he had been at that time in his life he realized now. Harder edged and yet still brittle. And he was starting to understand why. To realize just how much more difficult it must have been for her to survive the same kind of life he’d survived. And yet she had.

“No,” she said flatly. “I have a fake boob prosthesis McCoy made for me. It covers most of this mess up and compensates on the décolletage for when I have to slap on a slinky dress and get out and press the flesh for the Board. Plus it keeps the charging port clean. I don’t always wear it in the armor, though, and, lucky me, right now it’s sitting back home in my own garage.”

Remembering back to how many times he’d been stripped of his armor by events he had to admit to a bit of reflexive revulsion for how the same would only exaggerate her vulnerabilities before the eyes of the world. He didn’t enjoy exposing any vulnerabilities at all. Ever. But her choice was a kind of defiance he could intellectually appreciate; thumbing her nose at conventional female standards of beauty, at how the world would look at that cold metal circle, so exaggerated, but he shuddered over how the general press, the tabloids, Jameson’s Bugle, probably savaged her for it. Worse than they’d savaged him during the long years of his heart troubles. It wasn’t a choice he thought he would make. Yet she had.

He looked her over more closely then. She wasn’t beautiful – she still looked too much like him to ever be called beautiful –, but her features were strong. Striking. A mirror of his own strength of will was evident in her level gaze. She was tall, long-legged, only a few inches shorter than he was. Her body was fit and hard, like his own, from muscling around metal and tools and piloting the Iron Man. And scarred, of course, like his had once been. The one breast she had left was small and high, her hips slim, her waist not narrow but firm. From long years of assessing and appreciating the forms of women, in all their myriad shapes and styles, he knew she’d clean up very well. When she made the effort. 

“You said you’re public now?”

“Yes,” she said, her expression going guarded for a moment. “It was unavoidable.”

He laughed wryly. “It usually is. I imagine the press loves you as much as they love me then.”

She grinned back at him in wolfish camaraderie and went on stripping the rest of her armor off, tossing the pieces onto the workbench in front of her. She wore red bicycle shorts below, white tabi socks in the boots. “I’m Antonia Eleanor Stark, the richest, most powerful woman in the world – genius inventor, former weapons maker, giant of industry, fashion trendsetter and an original Avenger. They say what I damn well want them to say about me.”

He cocked a brow at her. “Even Jameson?”

She gave a bark of honest laughter at that and, with one hand already opening diagnostic ports on pieces of her armor, started looking around the nearby tables for tools.

“Well, Spider-Man and Daredevil certainly appreciated me going public,” she said, throwing him an eye-roll of a glance. “The increased number of foaming get-back-in-the-kitchen screeds written about me definitely deflect pressure from them. Though it is the complete social and moral decay that spawned someone like me that made them even possible, you understand.”

She started concentrating on her armor in earnest then. He watched her attention disappear into diagnostics and repair, her focus snapping away from him as if a switch had been thrown. He’d used to be able to do that. To focus completely on a task at hand and block out everything else. Since... Extremis, he’d had a harder time doing that. There were too many other things preying on his mind still.

He forced himself to turn away. Back to his own work. Stifled the impulse to ask her how Steve had reacted to learning she was Iron Man. He wanted to ask, yet, didn’t want to ask. There were far too many deeper implications to it he truly didn’t want to explore. Couldn’t face.

It was easier to pretend an interest in his own work. He stared at the modified repulsor on his own work bench, fisted his hands to either side of it. Knew how much it would improve the functions of her suit – by factors of ten at least – and kept stubbornly silent.

Some things he was damn well going to make Tony Stark figure out on her own. Other things… no. Not a chance.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Apparently I fail completely at recent X-book timelines (since I forced myself to give them up like dropping a bad drug addiction ten years or so ago). [ Hey, I thought Joseph was still the “good” Magneto instead of Erik. AHAHAHAHAHA! I’m old. ] So really, Logan & Co. shouldn’t be in Westchester yet as Schism hasn’t quite happened yet as of Heroic Age, but fuck it, Marvel, you do so many damn “events” they’re hard to fit in between each other with any coherence anyway. I’m just going with it as-is since it’s not exactly critical to this plot. -_-;
> 
> \--------------------------------------------------

Just to back up Reed’s more detailed dimensional scanning, Tony set up monitoring programs for anomalous energy signatures and unusual cosmic activity through satellites. He refrained from tapping into SHIELD’s systems directly, but did put a watch on their activity level. Just for his own peace of mind. There was no telling if Hill would call him first if they found something or not. She could be contrary that way. 

As a precaution, he blanked video on all inbound calls. No sense giving anything away about his visitor to casual callers. Not that just anyone was going to call him anymore, really; Hill and Commander Rogers already knew. Still it was a dark monitor that bleeped at him distinctively and flashed a name just before a familiar voice came through.

“Tony Stark, why the _hell_ are you in New York?” Pepper Potts demanded, exasperation clear in her tone. Even without video he could tell she was flying Rescue. He knew by the faint breathlessness of her voice. It had taken him a while to accept that she was sincere, after years of her yelling at him about the risks he took as Iron Man, but she truly seemed to enjoy flying a suit of her own. She gave an excited whoop and a laugh every time she lifted off. Tony was just glad he’d been able to give at least that much freedom to her – despite the risks. It didn’t really make up for anything, of course, but maybe that brief moment of laughter chipped away a tiny bit at the huge debt he would always owe her. 

“SHIELD business,” he said casually as he switched the call to his headset, flipping a look toward his other-dimensional self, -- who seemed oblivious to the call from elbows deep in the right leg of her armor –, as he settled the bud in his ear. “Hill wanted a consult on something only I could do justice to.” 

“Doubtful,” Pepper said with a snort, and the headset made it sound like she was standing beside him, ready to poke him in the shoulder with her organizer stylus for the white lie. He smiled a little at the mental image. “But I’ll let that slide for now. Are you going to be back in time for the fabrication meeting Friday? I really need you here to talk to the vendor about the metals, since that’s your area and not mine, Tony.”

“Should be wrapped up by then,” he said, hoping fervently that it would be the truth. It was only Wednesday evening. Plenty of time for Reed to come through. “Almost done. By Thursday PM, latest.”

“Okay then,” Pepper said warily. Then shattered the minor relaxation he’d gained just listening to her familiar voice by asking, “This isn’t really a transcontinental booty call, is it?”

“God no,” Tony said, wincing over the very idea right now. “SHIELD business, honest, Pepper.”

“Good, because that elevator girl you picked up? _Still_ calling the office, Tony. Be a little more… discerning next time, would you? Rescue out.”

She ended the call and Tony rubbed a hand over his forehead, sighing as he tugged the earpiece out again, suddenly feeling even more tired and drained than before.

It was looking to be a long night.

~*~

Tony had finally managed to mostly lose himself in the details of his new repulsor mod again, deliberately blanking his mind to the occasional bout of swearing and clanking coming from the far side of the garage, when another call came through.

“Stark,” he said out loud as he activated the hands-free automatically, too used to being alone in this garage. “Tony, I need a complete molecular resonance scan of all the inorganic and organic materials available from her dimension immediately,” Reed Richards said by way of greeting as Tony danced one hand over the controls to allow video on the nearest clear screen.

Tony frowned. That meant Reed wanted to scan her in her armor again back at the Baxter Building. But Tony had grown less and less fond of the idea of his other self meeting more people from this world the longer he considered it. He looked across the garage to find she was already watching him narrowly, her attention sharp.

“I’ll take care of that here,” Tony said, shifting his gaze back to Reed, a frown on his face. “In or out of armor? Or both?”

“Well, separately is sufficient,” Reed said absently over the sound of clicking keys, his hands moving rapidly on a keyboard below sight of the camera. “And I’ll require additional subjective details from her as well to better refine my search algorithms.”

Female-him had moved over by then, her gaze tight, her arms folded across her chest. “Ask your questions, Reed,” she said as Tony moved to a nearby console and fired up his scanning equipment.

“Ah, good, you’re there.” Reed’s gaze didn’t even flicker as he took in her half-dressed state. “Let’s get the basics first: full legal name, date of birth, location of birth, parents, siblings, living family members. It’s truly fascinating how many universes can be eliminated from such basic data parameters.”

“Antonia Eleanor Stark. March 20th. Nassau County, New York. Howard Ronald Stark, deceased. Maria Luisa Carbonell Stark, deceased. Only child. My only surviving relative is Morgan Eugene Reynolds, who changed his last name to Stark to trade on it, the jackass, a paternal cousin.”

Nearly identical, but not quite. His father’s middle name was different. As was Morgan’s. And Tony’d been born in Manhattan instead of Nassau County.

Reed hadn’t stopped typing the entire time she spoke, eyes flickering toward his programs running on the other side of the screen. But he looked up now, hands pausing at last, his expression nearly grave. “Earlier you alluded that Johnny Storm is the Invisible Man in your universe. Did Susan Storm then become the Human Torch?”

“She did,” Antonia Stark said, keeping her gaze averted from Tony’s thoughtful frown and Reed’s studied blankness both.

“While Ben still became the Thing and my cosmic alteration apparently remains the same, since you made no comment on it,” Reed said with less enthusiasm than might be expected.

“That’s true,” other-him said again, her tone still suspiciously neutral.

Tony had noted how cagey his other self had been on the topic of Sue and Johnny right from the start. He wondered what that seemingly small change of circumstance had meant for the Storm siblings over there – and their relationship with the Reed Richards of that dimension. It was hard for him to imagine the brash, reckless Johnny Storm without the power of fire and flight. Or Sue without her devastating skill with her force-fields. Or Reed without Sue, which seemed to be a definite possibility given other-him’s reaction to Sue’s presence at first. Tony had observed for himself a few versions of other realities where Reed’s genius ran unchecked by Susan Storm’s mellowing presence. They normally weren’t very pleasant realities at all. That Reed Richards here appeared to have a fascination for cataloguing them sometimes worried Tony, but it was a low-level thing. As long as Sue was around it wasn’t an issue anyway.

But now Reed just plowed on, apparently oblivious to the implications. “Interesting. Very interesting. That is a combination I haven’t encountered with much frequency in my studies of the multiverse, which means it is definitely rare. It does invite fascinating speculation on sibling genetics as applicable to mutates, however, – I’ll have to copy McCoy on this information – and,” he glanced down at a screen, raised his brows slightly in what was, for Reed, nearly open shock, ”it also eliminates 94.753% of the required search range of the multi-verse. This is excellent information, Antonia, thank you. And, Tony, if you could send the resonance data within the next 14 minutes, that would be optimal.” Reed switched off with his usual abruptness.

“So we’re rare, are we?” she said musingly. Tony’s attention flickered up, then back to the scan he was already running on her armor where it was still piled on the table across the room.

“That particular configuration of the FF is,” he said as he shot the first batch of data over to Reed. He’d re-secured the dedicated petabyte pipe to the Baxter Building on his first day back in the Tower. “I’ve seen plenty of female-me’s out there in the multiverse.” Which wasn’t exactly an exaggeration; he hadn’t gone looking himself but Reed had mentioned a few. Like the one who had married… Okay, _that_ was a chain of memory he wasn’t going to follow again.

“Don’t be deliberately patronizing,” she snapped, clearly annoyed.

His tone was sharper than it needed to be as he said, “Get into the open.”

Tension had ratcheted higher in the air. She was glaring at him. And he didn’t really want to engage her on this point. It was useless anyway.

He waved a hand vaguely toward the back of the room as he focused on adjusting the intensity of his scanning equipment back down to organic tolerances. She shifted that way without further comment, however – which told him more about how badly she wanted back to her own universe than to make him think she wasn’t ready to have the gender argument with him – moving clear of the hoists and racks and tool chests that clustered in the central part of the room, a brow raised mockingly until he nodded at her to stop. His machines locked onto her more solidly and started taking the organic scans Reed needed.

“I’m not sure how much inter-dimensional data Reed has built up over in your world yet, but as Iron Man he’s said we’re male about 85% of the time -- where Iron Man exists at all.” His smile was sharp-edged, his glance at her measuring. He was past ready to leave this topic behind because it was obvious, in a good percentage of those powered universes without, that a female-him in those hadn’t survived to be imprisoned or make her eventual escape. Worlds where their Starks most likely had been killed outright just for being a woman who dared compete in a man’s world. The grimness of her return look told him she understood that factor completely.

“I still consider it gross mismanagement of the multiverse, weighting it that heavily on the Y-chromosome side,” she said, relaxing slightly, and it was clear she was ready to let it go too.

“Uh-huh. So just what _is_ your issue with Sue?” he asked as he reached out to tweak the settings to get better readings off her artificial heart. He might have scanned it a little closer and for more than resonance just for the ‘alien tech’ crack she’d made earlier too. There would be no telling without it if she’d used the same source of parts his old one had or not.

She was silent for too long, and when he looked up it was into the female version of his own media smile again; cool and faintly mocking and utterly fake. “Let’s just say… she doesn’t share well.”

Tony goggled at her for a moment in pure shock. Then had to revise his already high mental estimate of how tough – or just plain reckless – she had to be even higher as he got his reaction under control. He wasn’t sure that was entirely a good thing. Reed Richards? Seriously? “Okay, that… that I _really_ didn’t need to know.”

“You asked, champ.”

He shook his head and sent the last of the data on its way to Reed, tacking on a note at the end for Reed to call him for the portal construction phase. Now more than ever, he wanted to make sure Antonia Stark went back to her own reality _personally_.

~*~

As the evening wore on, Reed called a few more times for refinements on her universe’s facts. She answered his questions concisely each time, and Tony could tell Reed was getting closer to locating her segment of the multiverse with each call. Finally, around 1 AM, Reed stopped calling and Tony figured he’d entered design phase. If he didn’t call back by 3 AM, Tony was going to crash the Baxter Building and find out what the hell was taking him so long.

Shortly after that, she ran out of repairs and checks to do on her own suit and parked herself in front of one of the better computers. At first she just checked out his systems. Learned her way around five years of program upgrades and improved security protocols. His own tap on the unit she was using showed him everything she did, though he knew she knew he was watching her. He tested her skills a few times, throwing up obstacles. Burying things. Moving data. Layering encryption. She circumvented him with little trouble and even tangled his own efforts a bit. After a while they were at détente, both stalled by the other’s skill, though he’d been keeping a few unfair tricks in reserve. But then she dived out into the wider world, hacking her way seamlessly through firewalls and datablinds.

She went straight for the news media and their shitty security first. It was the moment Tony had dreaded most, but he sat back and let her go.

“Finally give up, dick-boy?” she taunted from across the room.

“Don’t say I didn’t try to stop you,” he muttered back, earning a quick startled look that turned immediately wary. But it didn’t stop her, of course. Nothing could stop Tony Stark when she… when he thought he was right.

~*~

He was sitting on his stool, his back to the rest of the garage. It been much longer than an hour since Reed’s last call and Tony was nearly ready to call him and hurry things along. He had a soldering iron in his hands. There was a piece of disassembled something that wasn’t his new repulsor mod spread across the bench top, but he wasn’t paying much attention to what his hands were doing. Not that he had to. This was rote work.

She’d been silent on the far side of the lab for too long now. The low murmur of old news broadcasts had finally stopped. His systems had alerted him to the direction of each of her searches, taken note of the supposedly secure databases she broke into, the masked files she’d uncovered, but he’d made no attempt to interfere with what she discovered. She’d know if he was doing it anyway and he didn’t feel like getting into an argument with her. It was too much like arguing with himself. Pointless and profitless.

“How long?” she demanded suddenly, her voice sharp, hard. He lifted the soldering iron away from the assembly he was supposedly repairing but didn’t raise his head. “How long were they replaced?”

“The first for over a year,” he answered, not even pretending to misunderstand what she was asking. The Skrull infiltration had nagged at him too.

“I want the full specs, a sample model and the design theory for Reed’s enhanced detector,” she said, her voice still cold.

“I was planning on giving it to you before you went,” he said, lifting his head at last. He flicked off the soldering iron before wiping the tip clean and setting it carefully in its holder. Then he lifted his filter mask off his face. He turned finally to face her only to find that she was facing the lit bank of monitor screens near her armor – covered with news site web pages open with their large banners, lurid pictures, the text of transcript files scrolling slowly by – with her fists clenched on the cluttered workbench beneath them, her shoulders hunched forward. Then she turned in a blur of motion, and, in a way he recognized from his own darkest moments, grabbed the first thing her hand fell on and threw it hard across the room in an explosion of frustrated violence.

A welding tip, part of his brain noted as it ricocheted around in the distant depths of the lab.

“What the hell were you thinking!” she shouted at him. “How did you let yourself get… _there_.. how did you get to the point of f-fighting like that… for real… against _him_ … oh god…” And she dropped her face into her hands, scraped her fingers back deep into her hair and quivered in place. Her guts would be churning, her throat burning, he knew, the tension and frustration making her jaw ache, her finger joints pop as her nails dug into her own scalp. Causing the physical pain that could sometimes be a short distraction from the mental.

He glanced at the screen behind her and his own gut clenched. Saw the picture of himself, helmetless, dazed, lying sprawled on the ground in armor spattered with his own blood. Saw the larger picture of Captain America, his face pale with shock, bowing his head and spreading his empty hands wide in surrender before the EMTs and the firemen who had dared step between them.

 _That moment_. That moment when everything crumbled to ash. Steve’s hands on his bare throat, squeezing. Mindless, murderous rage darkening those clear azure eyes. Gone now. Wiped away. _What had he thought in that moment he couldn’t remember?_

That moment when Captain America surrendered.

And he truly didn’t want to have this conversation. Especially not with another version of himself who still had so much else to endure before she could even begin to understand. He’d done this too many times already anyway. In his own head. In his own defense when cornered by others carrying grudges and anger and grief of their own. Knew how useless, how fruitless it was to second-guess himself. He’d done the things he’d done for the greater good. Done them because there hadn’t been any other way that wasn’t _worse_. He had to have. _But he didn’t know for certain anymore._

There was no absolution in this. Only doubt. And doubt wasn’t something he could ever afford. Not and keep his promise to Steve to behave. To behave.

“You read the law as it was enacted,” he said coldly, “well the first one proposed was even harsher… until I got my hands on it, lobbied away at it line by line, section by section, until my throat was raw, my feet sore from walking back and forth between committee meetings and senator’s offices, and nearly every one of my favors on the hill had been called in. But they passed it anyway, and with it they still gave themselves the right destroy us if we refused to comply.”

“Goddamn it! You could have stopped it!” She whirled, grabbed something else and threw it after the welding tip. It, or something further in the lab, shattered this time instead of ricocheting. He sat impassively and let her destroy his things. They were only things. Things he could fix. “Xavier was right,” she snarled. “Lensherr was right. Only when they finally came it wasn’t just for the _mutants_ , it was for _all of us_.”

“No, they came for the mutants first,” he said somberly. “That was the first step on this road. It’s already building in your world, isn’t it? You see signs of it because mutant manifestations are climbing steadily; and people are already starting to fear their own children. A few years back there was a mutant massacre – of an underground group of the less… appealing… ones that provoked a… a reaction among some of Xavier’s people. Several governments, including the US, sanctioned an automated response – robot Sentinels – that got out of hand rather dramatically and was shut down. But the underlying fear and the need to try to control those with abilities remained. I thought I had time to work it from inside the system, to defuse it or deflect it, but I was… distracted too often. And then Stamford happened.”

“Damn you, Tony Stark,” she said, her voice shaking. He didn’t respond. Just watched her flatly. Waited.

“How did you let it get so far out of hand?” she demanded, glaring at him with hate-filled eyes. Knowing it was herself she was hating as much as him, that she was running her own actions through her mind now too. Looking for the patterns, the influences, the choices that might send her world to exactly where this one had been.

He knew she’d found and read the reports of Steve’s assassination already. Watched the footage. Read the autopsy report. Seen the aftermath. The funeral. He’d heard her sharp, panting, almost pained breaths as she read it all, watched it all, and – even knowing he’d been alive earlier, that she’d seen him alive here in this world only hours ago, and that he wasn’t even her own Steve – it had hit her like a mortal blow.

Like it had hit him.

He let out a slow breath. And gave her the raw truth that Happy’s sacrifice, that the grieving families of those who had lived and died in Stamford, Connecticut, that the ordinary firemen and aid workers who somehow pulled Steve off of him at the last minute before he did the one thing that Steve would never have been able to endure – killed a man he’d once considered his best friend – had proved to him.

“The average American doesn’t understand the stakes we fight for, or the obscure, but very real, threats we combat on their – and the entire world’s – behalf. They don’t understand that once our planet was revealed to the galactic stage there was _no going back_. They just see the explosions. The bystanders injured, the property damage and the collateral damage. The fact that their morning commute is ruined for weeks because an overpass came down or their favorite TV show is indefinitely delayed because the studio that films it was blown up. It’s all disruptions of their comfortable, protected lives. This makes them feel afraid.

The leaders of this country are influenced by the beliefs and fears of the average American. And the American people were saying, loud and clear, that they were _tired of it_. Even though it wasn’t rational. Or safe. Or smart. Even though caging us or exposing us would only leave them vulnerable to every supervillain, terror group and alien race with an anti-human agenda, they wanted it all to _just stop_.

And they were prepared to turn the full force of this country’s strength – both civilian and military – on us all to make that happen.”

She stared at him hollowly, her arms folded over her chest, her body wracked with small tremors. He knew she understood. Knew it as a truth in her world as well now that she’d seen the results here. But what she focused on out of it all didn’t surprise him at all. “Even Steve.”

“Yes. And it ate at him, as you can imagine. The whole time. But… did he do a stint as Nomad in your world too?” She nodded jerkily, her eyes raw and dark. She wasn’t crying but it was close. His own throat ached. “He couldn’t stand seeing his country do that. Fall so far into fear. Couldn’t believe they truly would. And so he fought it. Came out against it.”

“And against you.”

“Yes. Especially against me.” He swallowed hard. “At least it let him focus his frustration on something he could punch.”

“Rather than finally destroy his faith in America,” she whispered, her voice an agony, and his gut heaved, bile surging in his throat that he barely bit back, and he knew, _he knew_ that she understood exactly what he’d tried to do, tried to head off, and knew then that she loved her Steve Rogers – her Captain America – with every fiber of her being just as much as he…as he did his. There. He’d thought it again. _Allowed_ himself to think it again for the first time since the tentative rapprochement he and Steve had reached at fallen Asgard.

She looked over her shoulder at the screens again, her mind working, already working, he could see it. She was already doing projections for her world. Estimating. Planning. Revising. Trying to work her way around what she’d seen here. “How much of it… damn it! You have to know some of it was the Skrull infiltrators’ doing.”

“Some, but not all. Not enough.” He sighed. Rubbed his dirty hands over his face wearily. “Though they certainly made it very hard to keep things calm.”

“Hank… _their_ _damn_ _Pym_ … it was his idea to clone Thor.”

He closed his eyes, unsurprised by the familiar bite of pain and regret and shame, no matter that Thor was still willing to call him brother-in-arms. “Yes, but I approved it. Made it happen. Cost Bill Foster his life.”

Something else ricocheted loudly into the shadows. Her hands were already fists again at her sides it had happened so fast. “ _Why?_ Damn you, why the hell would you… would I _ever allow_ … God. Not Thor. Jesus, you stupid idiot, how did you condone that? How could you not see what Hank _was_? Before he got to Jan too?”

“I don’t know.” And the familiar scraped raw ache inside him grew stronger. Jan. Janet. Oh god. It still hurt like acid eating into him, the hole where she had once been in all their lives.

“ _Bullshit!_ ” Her contempt and disbelief ricocheted through the room harder than the things she’d thrown.

His voice was leaden. Weary. “ _I don’t remember_. I’m missing that last year of my memories when all those things happened, why I made all those decisions, what happened when... Steve died… right up until just before Osborn’s attack on Asgard.”

“Norman Osborn.” She spat the name with a loathing he echoed. “That pathetic showing in the desert. The spin that wasn’t spin.”

“Yeah, he really beat the shit out of me. Took me a long time to recover from it.” Longer because Extremis had already been failing even then. Already poisoned, damaged by the Skrull Queen’s subtle viral work.

“How? _Why?_ ”

Repeating this part was hard. Harder to say to her than to anyone else, because she would truly understand the depths he’d had to hit.

“To protect it from Osborn, right before they ran me out of SHIELD, I stored a copy of the SHRA database in my own head, in my Extremis-enhanced memory. I put it there and then, again with Extremis’ help, wiped out every extant copy of the database from every other system in the world. As Director of SHIELD I’d already had the power to prohibit physical copies. The database was highly protected already, highly confidential and controversial, and I used that to my full advantage. The one in my head was _the_ last one in existence. I made sure everyone knew it too. Osborn wanted it. Desperately. He would have yanked it out of me no matter what I tried to do to stop him; he had the law and his own ruthlessness on his side. I knew he’d get all those heroes’ lives under his thumb unless that last copy was destroyed. Permanently.”

Her breath hissed in.

“I’d made a back-up of my mind, my memories, everything, with Extremis, from before I uploaded the database. Then I coded Extremis to re-format my brain and while it was executing the program I led him on a chase around the world. He caught me just as it finished blanking my mind. I knew how Osborn’d react when he figured out what I’d done, so I made sure it was televised.”

Things clanked on the workbench as she dropped her hands onto it, leaned heavily on them, head sagging between her bowed shoulders. Knew she was running the scenario in her own mind. Analyzing how she might have run it from the data he’d given her. If she would have played it just that way. Realizing that, in that situation, she probably would have. And hating herself for it just as much as he still hated himself.

“Yeah.” He drew a shuddering breath, tried to find calm again. Failed. Let his voice shake anyway. “Later on, when Asgard finally came under Osborn’s attack, Hill and Pepper ran the backup on me through this.” He tapped the RT in his chest. “Got me going again. But Hill must have pulled the wrong one, an older one with that year missing, and my fail-safes wiped the rest automatically once one was used—”

“No,” she ground out, her icy voice slicing ruthlessly through his words. “That was you, not Maria. You made that call, Tony Stark, because you and I both know we gnaw at our own limbs when we’re trapped. And you were trapped. You’d deliberately trapped yourself just to have that excuse, you craven bastard.”

He went silent. Waited, heart thundering in his chest, pulse hard and sharp in his joints, the suit lying far too heavy on his bones.

He didn’t know why he hadn’t expected this from her. He’d never been able to convince himself it had been the right thing either. And it was very much a true Tony Stark thing to do – something several people had already gone to great pains to throw in his face. Grief was really no excuse for what he’d done to escape some of his own guilt, even by a little bit.

Not even a crushing grief so fundamental, so consuming that for a few eye blinks of time he’d seriously considered pulling the RT out of his chest after he’d woken up and read the news she’d just read and seen, learned, _realized_ all he’d failed to stop. What he’d lost. Even second-hand the agony had still been nearly unbearable.

He could have pulled the RT out then and just… stopped.

But then he’d seen his own instructions for his revival. It had taken both Captain America’s shield and Thor’s hammer to revive him. The icons of the two he’d wronged the most. And they’d done it. They’d brought him back anyway. But Steve had been the one to say so himself, not Bucky. _Steve_. Solid and real and back from the dead.

Steve. Coming into that tiny too-warm room in Broxton, Oklahoma, the one filled with the scent of antiseptic and internet bile, that reeked of accusing editorials and the acid of self-loathing. Steve who caught him by the arm before Hill, before Pepper, both hovering protectively, could protest and hauled him out of there. Steve who looked him steadily in the eye and lead him back to the hospital bed beside Strange and put him back in it. The bed where he’d stayed. Slept like the dead. Until the attack on Asgard came. Then he got up and put on armor even older than what she’d brought with her and shut Osborn down for good.

For Steve.

With Steve.

The only way it should ever have been.

“I don’t believe for a second you don’t have that year hidden somewhere,” she said sharply, breaking into the grim spiral of his thoughts. “ _I know me!_ I’d never give up knowledge gained forever, no matter how much it hurt. _Ever_.”

He drew a pained breath. Tried once more to make her see. To make his own conscience see. “You didn’t live through hunting your own friends, Stark, people who were virtually family, down like criminals… didn’t live through Steve’s… Oh God, his public funeral. And then his real funeral. You don’t really understand what Extremis was capable of either. What it let me do, what it could do. It re-grew my heart! Fixed my liver! Healed me and kept me going for weeks at a time with no sleep. I saw through satellites. No electronic system was beyond me with it. _I destroyed that year!_ ”

“Bullshit, Stark!” she screamed at him, pounding at her own chest above her artificial heart. “I know what we are. I cut off my own damn breast to put this fake heart into my chest myself. Don’t tell me what I’m capable of— what I know you’re capable of enduring when you think you _need to_ because _I already know!_ ”

They glared at each other. Breathless. Focused. Furious. And into that moment of fraught and deadly silence a soft beep preceded the sound of Reed Richard’s voice.

“Tony, I’ve got all the angular phase calculations ready, and I’m compiling a reality-stabilization program right now. You wanted me to let you know when I was ready for build phase—”

Tony rose to his feet, commands already flowing out of his skin, turning clothes to armor, walling him away. And the woman who wasn’t him at all, would never be him, watched him disappear behind it with angry, hate-filled eyes.

“We’re on our way, Reed,” he said calmly into his comm as she all but dove for her own armor. “Five minutes.”

~*~

Sue Richards was waiting for them on the roof of the Baxter Building when they landed. Despite the hour, she was still in costume, looking a little blurry-eyed, but otherwise alert. “Reed’s expecting you,” she said, leading them both toward the waiting elevator. “And Tony, there’s been no sign of the Beyonder breeching any dimensions.”

“That’s good news,” Tony said, shedding his helmet. His other-self kept hers on, making no comment or greeting other than a short nod. Sue’s welcoming smile died away a little. “I’ve been watching the dimensional monitors for him so Reed can focus on locating your universe, Antonia,” she said with a deliberately friendly smile.

His other-self said nothing. Sue gave Tony a pointed look. He kept his expression studiously bland. Nothing that his other self might have gotten up to in the other dimension had any bearing here. Really, he told himself. “That’s good,” the other woman said finally, clearly uncomfortable despite still being hidden behind her helmet. “And it’s Tony, dammit.”

Sue’s expression was firmly bland as she responded, though Tony could see a warning glitter in her eyes, “It’s just easier for us to keep it straight that way, I hope you understand.”

Tony kept his mouth shut as his other-self turned her helmet toward Sue. The silence was thick as the two women stared at each other.

The elevator finally came to a stop, opening onto Reed’s lab. Sue exited first, turning away from the other woman without another word. The space had been transformed during the night. Machines and consoles had been shifted out to the walls, leaving a vast open space in the middle. A portal would need the space free of interference to operate, Tony knew, in order to help localize and stabilize the inter-dimensional field. At the moment, Reed himself was wound around the perimeter, his attention focused on something near the ceiling.

“Tony and Antonia are here, Reed,” Sue called out. When Reed turned his elongated neck to blink down at them in mild surprise, she waved at him and smiled. He smiled back at her for an instant until his gaze drifted to the two of them.

“Ah, yes, there you both are,” he said, and if Tony didn’t know better he’d think Reed was actually blushing. “My preliminary specs are on the first console to your left, Tony, Antonia. I’m refining the stabilizing programs further, but if you’d like to get started the portal shouldn’t take long to construct…”

“I’ll look them over, Reed,” Tony said, shunting his armor back into bones and clothing again.

“ _We’ll_ look them over,” female-him said half under her breath, her tone annoyed. He shrugged at her. “Of course,” he allowed.

“Should I let Steve know we’re almost ready, Reed?” Sue interjected as she moved away, toward the far side of the lab. There was a station set up there that Tony recognized as Reed’s dimensional scanner interface.

“Steve? Why?” Tony asked, striding over to the console Reed had indicated. In a few keystrokes he’d started to pull the data up, the diagram unrolling across multiple screens. His counterpart followed on his heels, tugging her helmet off as she came. She set it down on the back of the unit and looked around the lab assessingly, her expression remote as she unlatched her gauntlets and laid them down beside her helmet. She made no move to remove more of the suit and Tony wasn’t surprised. She leaned on the console beside him, her attention already fixed on the specs Reed had left for them.

“Ah, yes, thank you, dear. Well, Tony, Commander Rogers requested that he be present for the transfer itself. As a matter of dimensional security, he said,” Reed said, his back to them all again.

“Ah,” Tony said, heart sinking, gut tightening again in low-grade anxiety. He’d been hoping to keep Steve and his doppelgänger separate for good. He turned his attention firmly to the specs too. Saw two points of the structure that he’d reinforce for stability right off the bat and made to mark the adjustment for the first, only to find female-him already reaching for that section of the design. He shot her a dark sideways look that she returned full-force and went for the second point instead.

The sooner this damn thing was built – and used – the better.

~*~

He was under the floor plates, re-routing power connections to the portal unit base, when he heard Steve’s voice in the lab above. He closed his eyes and swore once, his nerves feeling suddenly raw. Exposed. Damn her for making him remember so much. Re-live so much. It made it so much harder for him to stuff things back down again where they belonged. Away from Steve.

He finished what he was doing as quickly as he dared before slithering out of the access-way into the main lab again. He located his counterpart with a quick glance – her head ducked down, her hands busy slotting panels into place on the focusing modules – then located Steve, who was leaning against Sue’s monitoring station, one hand on his hip, the other bracing him up.

“Tony.” Steve greeted him with a nod as soon as he appeared, straightening way from the console. He didn’t look tired at all though Tony knew he’d probably been up all night too. “Sue’s been telling me it looks like we won’t have a dimensional incursion after all.”

“Yeah, seems like we got a break for once,” he replied frowning slightly. “You know, we’re probably an hour out from test at least.”

Steve shrugged. Over at the portal arch where his female-self was working, Tony had caught the edges of the glances she was trying not to look like she was stealing at Steve. They made him want to throw something. “I had some free time,” Steve said, resting his hands on his belt.

Tony doubted that, but didn’t call him on it. Steve’s expression was neutral, but his gaze kept flickering toward the woman in the Iron Man suit too.

“Need a referee yet?” Steve asked when he realized Tony had caught his looks, a wry twist to his lips that made Tony’s pulse skip once.

“No,” he said flatly, not able to help himself despite the way it wiped the faint amusement from Steve’s face. “Did you catch up to Logan?”

“No,” Steve said with a frown, gaze fixed on Tony now. “He wasn’t around.”

Tony turned away to check some readings. Not to avoid Steve’s gaze. “Good thing we didn’t need him then,” he said with a shrug.

“Hey, dick-boy, did you get the power capacity fixed?” his female-self called out before clumping closer in her jet boots. He glanced over his shoulder at her. Her gaze was flat. Cool. Knowing. It drifted toward Steve who was watching them both, a thoughtful look on his face, before it slid back to him. She raised one brow at him, her mouth hard. And Tony wanted her gone. Gone.

“Yeah, testing primaries now,” he said calmly and flipped a switch.

~*~

To his relief, Steve seemed to realize he was being a distraction and retreated to the console with Sue. He sat next to her, talking quietly with her as Tony forced himself back into building-mode.

It actually took less than half an hour, between the two of them, to finish building the inter-dimensional portal generator. If it had been anyone other than her he was working with he might even had enjoyed the novelty of working with someone as in synch with his own process aesthetic. They rarely got in each other’s way after that first bump, and completed each other’s tasks with uncanny precision. Halfway through, Reed came down from his programming booth and installed the software controls personally as Tony and his other self finished off the final safety checks of the man-sized flimsy-looking oval of exotic metals and composite circuits. It wasn’t pretty, but it would get the job done. And probably not burst into flame while doing it either.

She put a bare hand on the portal, patted it once, and shot Tony a fierce look.

“It’s done enough,” she said, “Time for me to go home.” He nodded in silent agreement.

They’d ensured the portal wouldn’t rip her apart instead of transfer her. If she stayed in her armor. If for some reason she’d had to go through without the armor it would have taken them another two hours at least to reduce the portal field intensity enough for an unprotected human body, which would have required much higher power demands for the angular dimensional stabilization. They would probably have had to call Carol Danvers in to shoot some solar power straight into the grid to make up the demand. So it was good enough as it was, without the extra safety buffer. Antonia Stark knew the risks as well as he did and was clearly ready to take them in her eagerness to get gone too.

“It’s safe for you in that armor,” Reed allowed, nodding in agreement too, even as his fingers flew over the focusing controls and the dimensional targeting. A low hum began to build in the lab, the lights flickering slightly. Sue and Steve looked up, rose to their feet. Other-him stepped back from the portal, moving toward her helmet and gauntlets as Tony himself ran a last check of the hardware system for stability as it began to power up.

“Reed? Make sure to give her all the data on your enhanced Skrull Detector, please,” Tony said casually over his shoulder.

“My what?” Reed said, looking startled and distracted for an entire second, elongated fingers freezing in place before resuming their rapid tapping. His female self had already finished pulling her gauntlets back on and had paused while reaching for her helmet, shooting him a startled look before she got her expression back under control. And he knew then for certain that she’d hacked the specs from Reed’s system already. Anticipating that he’d hold back on her.

“Do you think that’s really a good idea, Tony?” Steve called, striding toward him with a frown.

Tony snorted, waved a hand in the air as he finished the final power check, then let the system run up toward operating capacity slowly. “She’s not from our past or our future, Steve, she’s from _another dimension_. And one divergent enough for me to have been born female on top of that. There isn’t any reason not to give her a tool that might help her universe avoid an invasion that shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”

“Just how much did you show her, Tony?” Steve asked severely, his frown deep, his gaze troubled. And Tony knew he didn’t consider this “behaving”. Knew that Steve considered this a violation of his promise to not do things without consulting him.

“There’s nothing she can learn about us that’s going to matter to us ever,” Tony said firmly. “She lives in an entirely different universe.” He was aware that Sue was watching him just as closely as female-him now, and he paused a moment to pick his next words carefully, “With everything that happened here, Steve, don’t you think it’s worth giving them a chance to do things… differently on their side?”

Steve sighed. His expression going grim, edging toward anger. “Not _them_. You told _yourself_ , Tony. You took it on yourself to tell her everything, didn’t you?”

“He didn’t tell me _shit_ , Steve,” female-him interrupted sharply, her brows low, her expression tight with anger. “With you wearing _that_ ,” she waved her gauntlet-covered hand at him in his blue-and-white costume that definitely wasn’t the Captain America uniform dismissively, “did you honestly think I wouldn’t go looking for what went so goddamn wrong over here _myself_? Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do after all, Steve.”

In the background, the machinery of the portal had reached operation levels. In the silence that fell after her words the heavy hum filled the air like the distant sound of thunder. It would take only her walking through the arch in her suit to completely activate it, Tony knew. And if he could push her through it without looking like he’d gone mad, he’d do it. But he held himself back. Forced himself to stay still, his hands in fists at his sides. And waited.

Steve met her fierce glare steadily, not backing down. “If you saw as much as you claim, then you know why I have reservations about this, ma’am… Antonia,” he said quietly. She flinched, looked at Tony, narrowed her gaze then turned to face Steve again, drawing her shoulders back as she obviously came to some internal decision all at once. Tony’s gut lurched in alarm.

“Okay, nothing’s blaring warnings in here and I know Reed has the selection software running already. The portal’s stable enough on its own right now. It’s locked on my universe. And dick-boy and I built it so I know it has to work. So, Reed, Sue, Stark, will you… can you give me a moment alone with Steve before I go?”

“No,” Tony said firmly, panic surging. “Just go through. _Your_ people are waiting.”

“Tony,” Steve snapped, frowning at him before shifting his attention back to Tony’s other self, focused, wary. “Why do you need to speak with me alone, Antonia?”

“Because, damn it. Okay, screw you, dick-boy, stay then.” She pinned Sue with a flat stare. “Sue, can you take Reed out? He doesn’t need to baby the machine. Nothing’s going to break on the portal; we built it, it’ll work. I just… please.”

Sue met her look for a long moment, her expression unreadable, and Tony’s heart sank. He knew he hadn’t been popular with Susan Richards in quite a while. There wasn’t much he could say to stall her. Not on a purely personal matter like this.

“Okay, Antonia,” Sue said and took Reed by the hand. He turned to look at his wife, brow raised, then nodded after a long moment of silent, obviously spousal, communication. He followed her out of the lab meekly, their fingers still entwined. The lab’s blast door slid shut behind them, locked, and Tony tried to brace himself.

He turned to glare at his other-self but she was already moving closer to Steve, looking him nearly in the eye in her jet-boots, her expression closed. Steve returned her look calmly, if clearly puzzled by her insistence on a moment alone.

“Okay, god, even knowing how pointless it would be, I want to try to smack some sense into this asshole standing behind us,” she began, her gaze fixed on Steve, all the anger draining away as she drank him in. That look. That was him with all walls lowered, all defenses abandoned, and rising panic clawed at Tony’s throat in response. “What an idiot he’s been… I’ve been… still am,” she continued. “Because I doubt I’ll dig up the courage to say this again on the other side of this portal to _my_ Steve but… _you_ are the best thing that ever happened to Tony Stark’s life, Steve Rogers, no matter what dimension we’re in.”

She reached out, brushed her armored fingertips gently down the side of his face. Let them linger on the line of his jaw. Steve didn’t react. Didn’t pull away. Just looked into her eyes calmly and waited. But he was too still. Too contained. Focused. “Never forget that. After meeting you here, like this, I know that it’s _you_ who makes all Tonys better than we could ever hope to be on our own. And because of that, it’s worth everything to us – _everything –_ to see you safe.

Nothing else matters.”

The resonance of her words hit Tony like a blow to the gut. That damned tape Hill had given him, much later, long after Asgard. His own words on that tape, broken and grieving, said to Steve’s corpse on that table, far too still, and lost to him through his own actions, reflected back on him now. And then, before Tony could make himself move, intervene, protest Antonia Stark leaned in and pressed her mouth roughly over Steve’s in an awkward, shaky kiss.

There was none of the skill he knew she had to have visible in that kiss, only a raw honesty, an aching longing, a grim resignation that ripped into Tony again like a blow. Steve seemed too stunned by her action to react. His hands stayed at his sides even as she shifted away.

“Tony Stark loves you, Steve,” she said clearly, her eyes wet, her expression raw. “ _Every_ Tony, no matter how it seems. Body and soul. We always have. We always will.”

Steve gaped at her in shock, his wide gaze fixing on her before lancing over to him. “Tony?”

The stricken look on Steve’s face paralyzed him. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Frozen as much by his own shock, his own horror for what she’d actually confessed out loud. _To Steve_. How she’d bared his soul with her truth. Spilled out his deepest, oldest, most closely-held secret.

She laughed bitterly. Drew the armored hand on his cheek away from Steve with obvious effort. “Oh like he’s really going to back me up? It’s not that easy for us. For him. For me. I’m the one who gets this free shot, not him. And this way I get to go back to my same screwed-up life where my Steve waits with no repercussions. While this asshole has to live with the fall-out here. Which makes me still every inch the same selfish, using piece of shit we’ve always been our whole life, doesn’t it Tony Stark?”

His throat was raw. Tight with panic, with shame, with fear. He wasn’t even sure how he managed to make his voice work. “Walk through that portal. Go. Now.”

Her look at him was hollow. There was no triumph there. Only pain. “Payback, Stark, for making me see those courthouse steps.”

“No,” Steve said to her, obviously fumbling for words, to understand, still stricken. “Wait. Antonia, you can’t just…”

“Yes I can,” she said, turning sharply toward the oval of the inter-dimensional portal generator, helmet clutched firmly between both hands. “That’s the only way I _can_ do this, Steve. I’m going back where I belong, where my own mistakes are waiting to be made – but they’ll be _my_ mistakes. And where, when the time comes, I’m going to do my damnedest to avoid making any of _his_.”

She looked over her shoulder at Steve one last time, her gaze fierce, hot, desperate.

“But _I won’t let you die_ , even for a little while. You won’t ever be on those steps to take those bullets in my world, Steve. _That I promise you, my love_.”

Then she jammed her helmet on, sealed it shut and stepped into the portal.

Keyed to her armor, the sensors in the portal flared instantly to life around her, activation power sparking the whole fragile ring of exotic metal and circuits and capacitors in a seething shower of blue-white light and flux. The lights in the room around them flickered, dimmed, and Tony could imagine the way the brown-out had to be spreading in waves across the island of Manhattan around them even now as the portal drew power, strengthened, steadied. Before them, the image of the Iron Man fluttered, shook. Then she completed her step forward, Antonia Stark, and walked into nothing, into her own reality, the armor popping out of their dimension like a soap bubble breaking.

One instant there. Then gone.

But her words – the secret she’d shared – _his secret._ That stayed behind, hanging in the air as the portal closed, as the machines ran down, their job done, falling into silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Continuity? Characters in two places at once? Or three? Lalalala… Marvel doesn’t care so… neither do I. Heh. Secret Avengers, New Avengers, and Invincible Iron Man, um, spoilers. Kinda. These are from 2010, available in TBP, so, yeah.
> 
>  
> 
> \----------------------------------

Tony barely dared move. Couldn’t. Didn’t want to look at Steve. Didn’t want to see the betrayal, the hurt, the anger that were sure to be on his face.

“What did she mean?”

Steve’s words echoed in the silent lab. Reed’s lab. Not the best place for this discussion. Really, no place would be good for the one discussion he’d never wanted to have with Steve. But Tony still couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. Steve stalked over to him. Stood in front of him. Got into his line of sight so Tony let his gaze lose focus. Tightened his jaw and refused to meet Steve’s searching gaze.

“I know you – she — you love me – that’s nothing new. We’re like brothers. Everyone knows that. Why did she have to send Sue and Reed out? What did she mean?” Steve paused and waited for him to respond. Tried to catch Tony’s gaze again when he didn’t and failed. Then repeated, his voice distinctly sharper, “ _Tony,_ _what did she mean_?”

Tony still couldn’t speak. Couldn’t deny. Couldn’t deflect. Could do nothing. He was numb. Frozen. Paralyzed. His nimble brain, his glib tongue. Both failed him, here, now, with that damning admission echoing in his ears, blocking him from finding the right words to put things back. Back the way they had always been.

But his silence seemed to do more than even the wrong words would have. Steve wasn’t stupid, just slow about certain things. He had certain blindnesses. About himself. About how others saw him, reacted to him. Blindnesses that Tony had taken advantage of for years and years.

Steve sucked in a sudden breath. Went tense. “She kissed me, called me her love. She meant… romantically.”

“All Tonys. She meant you too. The kind where you want to have…” he stumbled into abrupt silence and it was almost endearing to watch the famously brave super soldier balk over the word “sex”. Or it would have been if it wasn’t his soul being rent wide by the whole painful conversation.

Steve’s gaze was fixed on Tony, watching him intently even though he couldn’t seem to make himself say the word. Which was telling enough right there. “Don’t dodge it, Tony,” he said, his voice firm, his expression steel, “Don’t try to lie or try to cushion it. _Just answer me_.”

And he still couldn’t think of anything to say that would stop this. Because there wasn’t anything _to_ say. Steve wouldn’t let it go, he knew. It was too late. The damage was done. The only thing he could do now was give Steve the truth, and hope to salvage at least some tiny fraction of their friendship on the other side. It had somehow survived Steve’s death and the endless nightmare of the SHRA. Maybe it was strong enough to survive this too. _Maybe_.

“She meant exactly what she said,” he said, the hoarse words dropping like stones into the heavy silence. “I’ve always loved you, Steve, in every way.” He cleared his throat slightly. Made himself finish. “Which, yes, does also mean I’ve always wanted to have sex with you too.”

The silence remained taut, Steve’s expression focused, brows drawn tight as he concentrated. “No. How. Tony… you’re a ladies’ man…”

He would have laughed at that if it wouldn’t have broken him in half. “Not only. I’m actually bisexual.”

“Are you,” Steve said, his voice flat. Doubting.

“I am. I always have been,” Tony said, keeping his voice as calm, as matter-of-fact as he could manage. “Hm. I really thought you’d heard that about me already, especially after that whole Dream-Vision mess with Ty Stone got the media going on it again.” He waited for the axe to fall. Steve shifted. Not away. Not closer. Just moved. As if drawing himself up. Bracing himself.

“Tabloids. Gossip shows. They say anything and everything, almost all of it twisted so far from the truth, Tony, especially about you,” Steve said hoarsely, his expression strained. Tony knew one of the things Steve still very much disliked about this era was the press’s complete lack of respect for personal privacy. Particularly regarding sex. “But what about all the women? There’ve been so many of them over the years. Were you just pretending? Even with Rumiko?” 

Tony grimaced. Insensitive, but probably fair questions under the circumstances. Because there _had_ been a lot of women for him over the years. Even more recently. Faceless, nameless women he’d left behind without a thought, which wasn’t how he usually operated, he knew. No, he tended to pick women who would stab him in the back somehow. But not lately. Lately, seeing a woman more than once made him restless. Which was a kind of progress, maybe, if it hadn’t mostly been because he was fixated on something they couldn’t ever be for him.

None of them could live up to Steve.

Only Rumiko had ever come close to breaking that fixation. With her impish charm. Her light-hearted openness. Her playful, honest loving. So different from every other woman, every other man he’d loved. So warming. She’d come very, very close to dislodging Steve from first in his heart. But then she’d been killed and he’d grieved for her for a long time. Until eventually he’d gone back to drifting into female beds to build distance. To try to deny the gnawing ache of longing for Steve that had only grown stronger after he wiped his brain. As if he’d removed years of carefully strengthened defenses against his own feelings by doing that as well.

“I’m not gay, Steve. There was no pretending. Bisexual means being attracted to both men and women. I loved Rumiko. God, did I. But I haven’t really been attracted to another _man_ since we thawed you out of the ice.”

He had been, actually, but something had always stopped him from acting on it. Something. Hardly. Steve’s _existence_ had stopped him. His own fixation. His pathetic crush. Though there had been Henry Hellrung. But that had been a thing born more of his recovery than of honest desire, and he was ashamed to have used Henry that way now when Henry had done so much for him. So that wasn’t something Steve really needed to know at the moment. Or ever. He knew far too many terrible things about Tony already.

The silence stretched painfully. Until finally he couldn’t stop himself. He looked into Steve’s face. His expression was contemplative, wary, his eyes dark, hooded, thoughtful when Tony finally met his gaze. But not scornful. Not rejecting. Not yet.

“Why did you hide it from me?” And there was the flash of betrayal he’d never wanted to see again.

“Why did I hide it?” Tony laughed painfully, ran both hands through his hair. “You’re Captain America, our country’s greatest hero. You’d just been rescued from icy death, were the focus of all the world’s attention, and you were a man out of time, lost and alone and grieving. You needed a _friend_ , someone to ground you in this era, to bring you up to speed, to help you find your purpose again. And it was my greatest honor to _be_ that friend, Steve. It still is – though you sure as hell don’t need me for any of that anymore.

But back then, what you definitely _didn’t_ need was your guide dog to the future humping your leg while you tried to figure it all out.”

He watched Steve absorb his words. Saw the doubt, the confusion, the regret, the anguish flicker over his face. “Don’t mock yourself, Tony,” he said but the admonition was without force.

“It’s okay, Steve.” And he wanted to put his hand on Steve’s shoulder. Like he’d always done. Touch him. Reassure him. But he didn’t dare. Not now. If Steve knocked his hand away… his lungs ached as if he’d been holding his breath, his heart lurching in his chest. He put his hands in his pockets instead. Shrugged. “I’ve lived with this for years. Nothing’s going to change.” He hoped it wouldn’t. Steve’s friendship was… it was his whole reason for living. That missing year – the year leading up to and including Steve’s death – only proved it. He’d _had_ to remove it from his memories or he might not have tried to come back from his reboot at all. As it was, Stephen Strange had had to come looking for him, lost in his own battered mind.

“Tony,” Steve said, clearly still struggling with the revelation, his gaze flickering over his face. Searching. For what he didn’t know. And Tony’s face felt frozen under that regard. He had no idea what his own expression was, but probably nothing good given Steve’s faint frown. “That explains why you didn’t say anything at first… but later, Tony? Later on. All these years. Why keep hiding this? Why keep hiding who you are?”

Tony frowned, trying to think of a way to explain that wouldn’t leave an even deeper, bloodier rent in his soul, and then his brain seemed to lurch into motion again. At last. Contingencies and diversions finally began to race through his mind.

“I wasn’t hiding anything about me, Steve, I just didn’t feel the need to act on it. This is Reed’s lab,” he said, looking around the empty room pointedly. “He should be in here to check the results of the dimensional crossing, make sure it was stable and that there’s been no damage to dimensional barriers. We don’t want the multiverses collapsing into each other or anything.”

Steve’s expression went hard. Stony. “You’re avoiding this,” he said, his voice chill with disappointment.

“Because it changes _nothing_ , Steve,” Tony said with determination, spinning on his heel and striding toward the blast doors Reed and Sue had disappeared through earlier. “I’m the same man I was half an hour ago. Nothing’s different.” He half expected to feel Steve’s hand on his arm. Stopping him. Forcing him to start the argument again. As usual. But it didn’t happen.

Not fighting with Steve; he’d never thought it would hurt more than fighting with him did.

Grim, Tony danced his fingertips over the keypad, unlocking the door. The heavy thing slid open with a low growl of powerful motors, revealing Reed and Sue wrapped in each other’s arms in the hallway beyond. Not kissing, or engaged in anything overt, but simply holding each other close. Sue’s head was buried on Reed’s shoulder, Reed’s eyes were closed tightly, his faintly anguished expression clearly visible to Tony where he paused frozen in the doorway.

And Tony’s suspicion that both of them had seen something of the mess his other-self had to have made of their counterparts’ lives in that universe was confirmed.

He was going to give himself another ulcer with the way his stomach was aching and chewing on itself these past two days, he thought in an odd moment of clarity. Pepper would kill him if he started vomiting blood in the office bathroom again. Though they could hardly have missed the opening of the blast door, neither of the Richards had moved. Tony cleared his throat with difficulty. Sue raised her head slowly, looked over her shoulder at him with sad, weary eyes, but didn’t pull away from Reed.

“She’s gone. The portal worked perfectly. You can have your lab back now, Reed. You might want to re-verify dimensional integrity, but unless something else breaks through and you need Iron Man to blast it, I’ve got a start-up business to get back to,” he said, and was stunned by how impossibly normal his own voice sounded in his ears.

He strode quickly down the hallway, moving past them before either of them could reply. Deliberately not hearing Steve’s boots ring on the floor behind him. Nor his voice call after him.

Instead he called his armor and let it enfold him completely between one stride and the next and was gone.

~*~

Tony stood alone on the top row of the rickety wooden bleachers of the rented test track on a rare dry Seattle spring day. He had chosen to watch the first stress test of version zero of the brake system of what would hopefully be his first repulsor tech-driven car prototype from that vantage point. The beta car was little more than a glorified go-kart at this stage, with only the chassis and inner safety cage structure finalized and only the most essential systems and controls in place. A very expensive go-kart, granted, but it was an important test bed for their proposed modular construction system.

Then Carol Danvers drifted silently out of the sky to land beside him in her iconic black-and-gold costume. He saw Macken, Cababa and Wyche whip around all the way down at the bottom of the bleachers to gape at her. Pimacher, though, shifted a little closer to Tim Cababa, and the look he shot over his shoulder was sour and suspicious. Huh. So that _was_ how it went. He owed Mrs. Arbogast fifty bucks after all.

“You dirty dog, why didn’t you let more people know about your alternate-universe visitor the other day?” Ms. Marvel said without further greeting. He glanced at her sidelong and let a smirk twist his mouth.

“Oh, hey Carol, nice to see you. It’s been a while. You here in Seattle on business or pleasure?”

“Oh screw you, Tony,” she said with a wide grin, her eyes sparkling with amusement behind her black domino mask and gently jostled him with her shoulder. He was rocked on his feet to the side a little from it, but nothing even close to losing his balance. The suit compensated, even in his bones, and she was always careful of her strength anyway. “Now dish the dirt on girl-you. I’m incredibly disappointed that you didn’t let me meet her, you know. I’m sure we would have had sooo much to talk about. Which would have been mostly you, of course.”

He shook his head, arms folded over his chest, one hand curled in front of his mouth as he went back to watching the car make its interrupted circuit around the track. As instructed, the driver was starting it at max acceleration and stopping it short after ten seconds in order to test both the in-city energy-return feature on the drive train and the four-wheel braking system. The brake solenoid was the part that had been giving him issues before he’d been called to New York. His concentration had been shot ever since and he was concerned about the robustness of the design now that it had been fabricated. But Carol was still standing there beside him, waiting for an answer.

He glanced at her and said, deadpan, “Such fine motivation you give me there. Thankfully she’s safely back in her own universe now and far beyond the reach of cheap gossips like you.”

“Cheap! Ha! Hardly. I deal in only first-rate gossip,” Carol said and threw back her head and laughed. Her long blonde hair shone in the sun, golden strands moving faintly in the breeze rising off the track. With her laughter, her generous breasts shifted delightfully beneath the reinforced unitard she wore. She was a stunningly beautiful woman. Always had been.

“Remind me again why we don’t sleep together anymore?” he asked, eyeing those magnificent breasts and the long, strong thighs bared below her generous hips hungrily. That made her stop laughing and frown at him instead.

“Whoa, okay, that’s completely out of left field there.” Her eyes narrowed dangerously behind her mask, her gaze bouncing from eye to eye as she stared back at him. “Because we only ever did it when we were both drunk out of our minds? And mutually agreed never to do it again when sober? Or talk about it either. What the fuck, Tony?”

“What do you think about my car? Other than the distinct lack of a shell?” he said, waving the hand that had been curled in front of his mouth in the air between them carelessly. She didn’t fall for the change of topic, staring at him fixedly instead.

“What happened, Tony?” she asked again, her voice softening, brows lowering.

“Nothing happened. Other than a visitor from another reality showed up, failed to bring an enemy along with her that we could either punch or blow up, and spent the night in my lab in the Tower spiffing up her charmingly retro armor until Reed Richards found her universe, had us slap together an inter-dimensional portal, and sent her home the next day.”

“Yeah, a visitor who was basically you, as a woman, Mr. I-Have-Issues-About-Control. And now you’re trying to climb into bed with me. Which we both know is a spectacularly bad idea.”

“And just why is it a bad idea again?” he said, frowning at her thoughtfully.

She let out a deep sigh. Crossed her arms high over those delicious breasts. “Because you’re my friend, Tony, and while I like you very much I don’t ever want to sleep with you again, _and_ because I know _you_ sleep with random people when you’re avoiding things. So quit avoiding and answer the damn question!”

She could be amazingly stubborn at times. Almost to the point of obsession. It was a fairly common trait amongst superheroes, actually. She’d wait him out easily, given that he really needed to get his full attention back on the performance of his prototype car and he knew she wouldn’t leave him alone until he did answer her. In some way or another.

“She was me, Carol, only as a woman,” he said flatly. “I’m sure you can appreciate some of the basic conflict right there. A woman who spent most of her time here digging through the news of events of the past five years. Which is, incidentally, roughly the length of the gap in the time-flow between her universe and ours.”

“Oh,” Carol said, her expression going instantly somber. She stared into his face searchingly, looking for what he didn’t know. “Why’d she do that, Tony?”

He looked her straight in the eye. He knew she was maneuvering for a spot on Cage’s team mostly because she didn’t want to go back to the Tower. The Tower with too many bad associations right now. Or probably be on a team with him again just yet either, even though they were still friends. “Because I took her to the Mansion first.”

Carol had nothing to say to that and stayed silent long enough for the car to make another stop-start circuit of the track beyond, her expression showing blatant worry. Tony didn’t bother to watch the car further. He could hear the faulty solenoids going. They had another two-three circuits in them at most.

Her attitude was distinctly wary as she asked, “Did Steve meet her?”

“Did Commander Rogers meet her? Commander Rogers who is immediately informed of all potential threats to Earth via space, dimensional crossing, magic artifact, scientific discovery or lab accident? Of course he did,” he said with a smile that made his face hurt. And he hadn’t heard from Steve since he left him behind in Reed’s lab three days ago. Not even in his capacity as Commander Rogers.

Carol looked stricken for some reason. “Oh. I didn’t realize.”

“Didn’t realize what, Carol? She showed up, researched everything about one possible way she might completely fuck up everything best and brightest about her life, then got to go home. Steve shook her hand and thanked her for her patience. She gave him a kiss goodbye. It was all very civil.”

Carol winced, looked away down toward the ground, one hand hugging the opposite arm close. “Damn it, Tony. I’m sorry.”

He let his gaze lose focus on the distant tops of the cottonwood trees surrounding the test track. Heard at least two of the solenoids fail in the brakes of his car with distinct popping sounds as the driver slammed them on again, faithfully following the instructions of the stress-test Tony himself had designed.

“Go catch my prototype before it crashes into the retaining wall, would you, Carol?” he said, rubbing his hands over his face wearily. “I’m a little short on R&D cash this month after funding the Mansion remodel before I sold it.”

He’d been wrong. The solenoids had had only one circuit left. The other two failed under the unexpected demand as the driver tried the brakes on the slewing car desperately.

The shouts of alarm from the bleachers below barely had time to reach them. In a blur of black and gold and displaced air, she was gone. Then he heard a cheer instead of the crunch of composites and metal against concrete.

One less price to pay, he thought wearily. That was good. That was always good.

~*~

“Hello, Steve,” Tony said, still frozen in shock after he looked up from trying to juggle his buzzing phone out of his pocket as he opened the front door of his condo to find Commander Rogers, in full blue and white uniform, sitting on his couch. It was well after midnight, and he’d been hoping to at least snatch a short nap before trying to catch up on some of the design reviews from the team that were piling up in his inbox.

Steve didn’t return the greeting and stayed leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, his hands braced in front of him, fingers threaded together. His gaze was fixed on Tony as he finally stepped the rest of the way inside and closed the door slowly behind himself. Tony locked the door automatically and glanced down at the message showing on the screen of his phone.

“Pepper let you in,” Tony said, leaning back against his front door, his head thumping hard against the brushed stainless steel. That was the text from her warning him of that very fact. Sent after the fact. He was sure it had been on purpose too, given how annoyed she’d been with him all week. He banished the note from the screen unanswered and slipped the phone back inside his jacket.

“I want you to know I haven’t been ignoring this, Tony,” Steve said, his gaze direct, his expression neutral. “I had something to take care of on Mars.”

“On Mars.” He laughed once over how he didn’t have any idea what kind of crisis might have made Steve have to travel to another planet of the solar system. Then winced over how hollow the laugh sounded. Once he would have known exactly why. Once he’d probably have gone himself. Oh how the mighty had fallen, he thought wryly. Hill was probably chortling gleefully over it still. “Have a nice trip?”

“We did what we needed to there,” Steve said gravely. “And I spoke to Rhodes. Privately.”

Tony winced again. Closed his eyes. Let one hand fall lax at his side, the other slip into his slacks pocket as his heart began to race painfully in his chest. He swallowed hard once.

“Apparently I’m one of the few Avengers who misunderstands your sexuality. For that I apologize.”

“It’s okay, Steve. Honestly. It’s not like I’m obvious about swinging both ways anymore.”

“No. Not since you met me, actually,” Steve said, his voice oddly muffled. Tony opened his eyes again to see Steve with one hand over his mouth, the other braced akimbo on his thigh, his expression drawn. “Rhodes was quite emphatic about that fact.”

Good ol’ Rhodey. Hanging him out to dry like that. He should re-program the War Machine to leave sucker marks all over his skin next time he brought it in for a re-fit, Tony thought idly. Or he could offer him a blow job. He hadn’t done that in quite a few years. It might be fun to watch Rhodey turn red and splutter with outrage like a twelve-year-old offered brussels sprouts again.

“Yeah, Rhodey,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going to need him back soon. Mind returning him?”

Steve ignored that comment completely. It hadn’t been much of an attempt at diversion anyway. “Carol Danvers came to see me too.”

Tony’s eyes went wide for a moment as shame for the sloppy pass he’d made at her the other day swept through him. Then he sighed. He was really far too tired for this. “She filing a sexual harassment claim against me?”

“What? No.” Steve frowned and lifted his head. “She’s _worried_ about you.” He paused. Let his gaze sweep over Tony. It only made his frown deepen. “ _I’m_ worried. You look tired. Are you sleeping?”

No, as a matter of fact, he thought bitterly, he hadn’t been able to sleep much more than an hour or two each night since his other-self had gone back and even the RT could only do so much to offset that. But he wasn’t going to tell Steve that. Coffee and engineering challenges and Pepper’s haranguing would get him through. They always had before.

Tony shoved away from the door and paced into the open living room, circling well away from the already occupied couch toward the dining area. The broad dining table was covered with blueprints and encrypted tablets. All of it secondary, but still necessary, work he hadn’t quite gotten to yet

“If I look tired it’s because I’m busy trying to break every rule of the traditional design-to-manufacture process, Steve. Which means I have hundreds of things to do every day. Parts and systems to design. Fabricating to oversee. Testing to do. Investors to court. A whole new company to build. Too many things and not enough hours in the day to get everything that needs to be done, done. Plus I’m Iron Man and an Avenger. I’ve always been a busy man. Now is no different.”

There was a long moment of silence where Steve looked him over, that sharp blue gaze seeing right through every word.

“You don’t have to be an Avenger…” Steve began and Tony’s vision tunneled, went dark at the edges, his blood throbbing wildly in his ears. He staggered on his feet a little, bracing one hand against the tabletop beside him, and suddenly Steve was there, a hand on his other arm, steadying him. “Tony! Tony. Are you all right?”

Steve’s hand gripping his arm felt like it was burning him. Even through the suit coat that wasn’t really a coat. It was made of the armor that lived in his bones. Part of him, even though it had no nerve endings in it. He could barely think beyond the contact.

“You want me off the roster?” he managed to force out, his throat tight, his darkened gaze fixed on the bare hardwood floor in front of him. Words said not long ago rang mockingly in his mind: _“You can have anyone you want. Except Iron Man or Thor.”_

Steve hissed in a breath. “No, damn it, I _don’t_ want you off the team, Tony. I need Iron Man available.” He shook Tony’s arm lightly. “But if _you_ need to take a short leave of absence, or step down to reserve, just to take care of your company for now… I was only trying to give you an option, Tony. You’re taking on too much again. You look like hell. Carol was right.”

Fading adrenaline took the last of his reserves for the moment. Receding shock made him feel groggy, lowered his barriers to the exhaustion he was barely keeping at bay. Steve was standing so close. So near. Without thought, Tony turned toward him. Raised his hand and traced Steve’s cheek with his fingertips, exactly where his other-dimensional self had touched him. Let them linger on his jaw in the same place too. There was the faintest trace of stubble there. He could feel it with his fingertips, though it was far too blond to see without using the suit to enhance his vision. He didn’t try. Instead he let his gaze drift up.

Steve didn’t flinch. Didn’t pull away. But the gaze Tony met was somber. The mouth below grim.

“Tony,” Steve said quietly, a faint hint of something else in his tone. Something like… regret.

He came back to himself with a start. Jerked his hand away from Steve’s face and twisted his arm out of his hold before striding around the table toward the kitchen area. The condo was really just one big open space, except for the bedrooms and the bathrooms. Penthouse, of course. With a spectacular view of busy Puget Sound and the snow-tipped Olympic Mountains beyond that was completely unobstructed except for a construction crane to the north. A view barely visible at this hour of the night, but still evident by the flicker of a few distant running lights at sea. This new place was ultra-modern and slick. All hard metal surfaces, pale woods and clean lines. Expensive and sleek. Just the way he liked it.

His broke really wasn’t anyone else’s broke, after all.

“I don’t need to go on reserve. I’ll stay on the active roster,” he said, putting the stainless steel island that made up most of the kitchen between himself and Steve. “We’re official starting next week, right? Want some coffee? I’m making a pot. I’ve still got work to do.”

He dared look at Steve again then, who was standing right where he’d left him, at the side of the cluttered dining room table. His hands were resting on his belt and his head was bowed slightly, turned to the side. Away from Tony. The position drew his attention inevitably to the heavy line of Steve’s arms, the sculpted bulk of his chest, the tight washboard of his stomach.

“I’ll pass on the coffee,” Steve said, lifting his head, his gaze catching Tony’s with unerring accuracy. “Yes, the teams go live next week. Luke says he’s almost done with his picks. I need to get back to SHIELD tonight. Finish a few things up. Look into some others.” Tony could see there was a shadow there, at the back of those usually clear eyes. An uncertainty. A wariness. But one far different from the open disagreements, the old arguments, the deliberately vague references to things that Tony had once had his fingers on the pulse of that still lingered between them.

Inside his head Tony cursed Antonia Eleanor Stark long and thoroughly for putting it there. For making Steve aware and awkward. And he cursed himself just as hard for slipping just now, for letting himself get tired enough to do so and add more weight to the whole thing. But since he’d come back from the arid wasteland in his head – a wasteland totally devoid of Captain America for some reason –, he’d had a hard time keeping his mind off Steve. Work helped. Work and trying to build again from the ground up.

And things had been rough enough between them already, with Tony trying to lie low enough for Steve to walk the line between placating the enemies – and allies – out for his blood and yet still get his own technological plans in motion. Money was moving in strange ways out there right now, the power brokers shuffling their stances in order to deal with Steve’s rigid ‘no backroom deals’ policy. He knew there was already maneuvering going on to get Commander Rogers’ authority as Top Cop revoked. He wasn’t privy to much more than rumors, though. Which meant it was probably already further along than was going to be comfortable for Steve soon.

But he couldn’t say any of that to Steve anymore. Particularly now. Not without starting a fight he simply didn’t have the energy for at the moment.

“How’re you getting back?” Tony asked, while strategies and possible workarounds swirled at the back of his mind anyway, trying for casual for a moment and walking into another minefield instead.

“Sharon’s waiting on the roof with the car.” Steve hesitated. Looked directly at him. “You should take the night off, Tony. Get some rest.”

Ah, the lovely Sharon Carter. Sometimes he forgot about her completely given how seldom Steve mentioned her. Or brought her around the Avengers. Were they still fucking? Tony wondered deliberately, just to feel the stab of it behind his RT. Then he wondered if SHIELD was still using Ferrari’s F430 as a base for their flying cars. He’d have to see about pushing them out of that spot with his own car next time design phase came up. Honestly, that model was three years out of production already. His mind was wandering badly, he noted apprehensively. He really needed Steve to leave. Soon.

Tony braced his hands on the countertop and smiled the same wolfish smile his counterpart had used at Steve now. “ATC up here is kind of twitchy about small, non-filed flights. I hope you made sure to get proper clearance, Commander Rogers. Enjoy your ride back with Agent 13.”

“Tony, stop,” Steve said, his tone frustrated. He rubbed at the back of his neck with a hand in irritation and for a moment Tony regretted the snark. But then he went on the offensive. He had to. Before he did anything too reckless. Like walk over there and kiss Steve.

“Look, I’m not in a position to blow the world up anymore, Steve, just my financial future. I’ll sleep when I’m done with my car. Pepper’s getting a party set up soon,” he said, drifting over to the windows with his hands in his pockets, abandoning his nebulous idea of making coffee. He didn’t trust his hands not to shake and spill grounds everywhere. “We’re trying to scare up investor capital. That’s about the extent of my plans for world domination this week.”

And maybe scare up something more too; the news from Southeast Asia was getting a bit odd, but he wasn’t sure about that yet. It was only a nagging notion of unease in the back of his mind for now. From things a few suppliers – of the more exotic materials kind – had let slip when pressed on why they wouldn’t, or _couldn’t_ , give Stark Resilient what it needed right now. Things Steve probably had a handle on anyway and wouldn’t let him in on even if he asked.

“I’m not worried about you taking over the world,” Steve said, his jaw tightening, his hands flexing on his belt. “I’m worried about you. As a friend. You’re tired, Tony. Exhausted. Even you make mistakes then.”

“We’re still friends then?” he said before he could stop himself and wanted to call them back even as the words left his mouth. His mind was spinning with so many things just under the surface. Regret. Anger. Frustration. Fear. Longing. That damned longing. So strong now.

The look Steve gave him was equal parts exasperation and anger. “Of course we are, Tony.”

“Even though you’re standing there wondering if I’m imagining you naked right now?” Tony said, his voice a harsh rasp in his throat. Then wanted to shoot himself in the head. God damn it. What the hell was he _doing?_

Steve didn’t flinch though his mouth thinned, his nose flared. “I’m not thinking any such thing, Tony. But I’m starting to wonder if you really can handle this after all. We clearly need to talk about it at least.”

There was a thump as something hit the floor near his feet. The heavy structural glass wall behind him was suddenly cold against his shoulders, the chill seeping readily through just his dress shirt.

“Oh, I think it’s pretty obvious I can’t, Steve. At least not right at this moment when I’m tired enough to want to crawl into your arms and ask you to fuck me unconscious. I could really stand to be fucked right now, you know. Up against this wall would be fine. Pegging just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I miss getting fucked by a real cock. And, okay, my brain-to-mouth filter has evidently gone completely offline tonight too,” he added, utterly horrified by the words spilling out of his mouth, but apparently completely unable to make himself _stop_ saying them either.

It was all too late anyway. Far too late. He swiped a hand down over his own chest, bumping it over the exposed RT. At some point, unconsciously, he’d absorbed the suit coat. The tie was gone too. That thump before must have been from his phone hitting the ground after the pocket around it vanished.

“Well, that’s never good, since I don’t really have much of one in the first place, most people think. But I do, actually. I could say much worse. Sometimes I do anyway. You need to go. Steve. Sharon’s waiting and you have work to do.”

Steve had straightened up. Turned to face him fully as Tony spewed his hideous babble, played with his own clothes. His expression was clouded, his brows drawing tight in a deep frown.

“You’re just trying to shock me,” Steve said heavily. “It won’t work, Tony.”

“Am I? I thought I was making a pass at you.”

Steve took two long strides toward him, his expression thunderous, until Tony made a sound, pained and low, in his throat. “Don’t,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t come over here, Steve.” Steve stopped. Looked into Tony’s face for one long, taut second before he closed his eyes, his own expression going suddenly pained and uncertain too.

Then he turned, and, without another word, walked across the room and out the front door of Tony’s sleek new condo into the night, closing the stainless steel door behind himself with a quiet click that echoed like a gunshot in the utter silence.

After one minute, two, of agonized waiting – of fighting back the unjustified, panicked feeling that it was just a ploy, a ruse, that the man he wanted more than any other, that he’d just driven off in disgust, would come back and draw more imprudent, reckless, damning words out of his mouth, or worse, touch him – Tony heard a low rumble from the roof above. Recognized it as the sound of a SHIELD hover-car taking off.

Tony let out a sobbed breath of relief. Let himself slide slowly down the cold glass until he hit the floor, his knees drawn up protectively into the circle of his arms. His head sagged forward as he curled around the erection tenting his slacks.

“Damn it,” he said to the empty room. “ _God damn it_.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Minor spoilers for Invincible Iron Man – Stark Resilient Book 2, including some brief, direct quoting (and a little paraphrasing) from Invincible Iron Man #30 by Matt Fraction. But not enough, hopefully, to make you sick. And things from Secret Avengers - Mission to Mars. I play with timing and event order a bit ‘tho; I plead the “it’s comics!” defense.
> 
> __________________________________________________________________

As if he’d ordered him up, Jim Rhodes walked in his front door at seven sharp the next morning, a box of fresh Top Pot Doughnuts and two double-tall dark roasts held in his hands. He was out of uniform, Tony noted, dressed in worn Levis and a Go Navy sweatshirt instead. Which was definitely suspicious, since they were both supposed to be in the office in an hour.

“Oh I still love you best, Rhodey, you know that,” Tony said to him from his place at the dining room table, where he was surrounded by glowing tablets and scattered blueprints. He was dressed down too, in a gray, amorphous tee shirt that was all he could be bothered to shape out of his armor this morning, and some equally loose gray pants. “And not just for the coffee you’re carrying. But I swear if there isn’t at least one raspberry glazed old fashioned in there I’m leaving you out of my will.”

“I don’t want to be in your will, Tony. Your will is a horrifying thing,” Rhodey said with a wry grin as he dropped the doughnut box on the table in front of him and tugged a cup out of the cardboard carrying tray before pressing it into Tony’s waiting hand. “I know this because I’ve read the fucking thing twice already and I’ve been meaning to ask you; why is some of it written in brown crayon?”

“That’s not brown crayon, that’s blood,” Tony said as he flipped the lid off the cup then took a long swallow of pure, steaming black bliss. He might have cheated and let the Iron Man take some of the heat out of the near-boiling liquid as soon as it hit his mouth though. Burned tongues were so annoying.

Rhodey grimaced. “Huh. Guess I know why that part isn’t electronic now.”

Tony bared his teeth at him as he retrieved his glazed prize from the box. “Yep.”

“Well, you’re looking pretty lively for someone who supposedly hasn’t slept in a week.” Rhodey sank into the chair opposite him, looked him up and down deliberately. “I could probably pack the War Machine in the bags under your eyes though.”

Tony just grunted at him through still-warm raspberry old fashioned and rolled his eyes. He knew he looked rough. He’d seen the evidence already in the mirror this morning after his shower.

“Heard you weren’t going in today; Pepper ratted you out.”

Tony shrugged and chewed his bite of doughnut. “She likes that part of her job best. I’ve got stuff I’ve been putting off to do here is all.” Figured he didn’t have to point out the cluttered table between them. “How was Mars? Still cold, red and airless?”

“Well, fuck, Steve already came by. And I wanted to give you a heads-up first.” Rhodey looked stricken for a moment, then it morphed into sheepish resignation as he snagged a sprinkle-covered doughnut from the box, scattering a trail of tiny multi-colored confection bits all over Tony’s work as he did so. “Hell, man, he asked. I couldn’t lie to him. Not about that. It’s public domain knowledge anyway.”

“S’okay,” Tony muttered, not thinking about the night just spent sitting on the floor staring at nothing, his brain running in endless, fruitless loops of self-recrimination and regret, self-disgust and shame, with an added layer of intense sexual frustration. Waking up encased in a powered-down Iron Man was now high on his list of future things to avoid.

“What I want to know is _why_ he cornered me about that all of a sudden. I assumed he’d heard about you long ago. Along with everyone else on the planet. And maybe a few other planets too, I don’t know. Do the Kree even care about that kind of thing?”

Tony went still for a moment, letting the slightly-too-nervous wave of words wash over him. Then he took another gulp of coffee and tugged over the nearest tablet to glance at the ignition schematic files displayed there again. Cababa’s work was brilliant; given the room to fly, he flew high. Tony approved it back to the Stark Resilient team server as-is. “Never came up, far as I remember. Carol might know.”

He could see from the corner of his eye that Rhodey was watching him closely. “So things still okay with you and Cap then?”

“Sure,” Tony lied as he shuffled through a few of Pimacher’s files. The man did decent work. Not as sparkling as Cababa’s, of course, but he was more experienced at the processes, faster. Which left him plenty of time to indulge his web-game app habit. And to send circumspect but nevertheless vaguely flirtatious texts to Cababa. Who didn’t seem adverse to replying in a similar vein. Ah, budding office romances. So much fun to ignore. Unless the work started to suffer. Then he’d sic Mrs. Arbogast on them and god help them both.

Rhodey sighed, but seemed as ready to let the topic drop as Tony was. “We went on alert last week. Something about a cosmic-level menace that might or might not show up and try to blow us all to hell. You know anything about that?”

“Yeah. False alarm.” He looked up with a wry grin. Met Rhodey’s faintly doubtful look, and let his grin fade slowly. “Did Commander Rogers ask you anything about Tokyo?”

Tokyo. Where his old SHIELD-exclusive anti-enhanced human techsuits had somehow appeared in the hands of terrorists and been unleashed against ordinary civilians. And where the Hammer women – Justine and not-so-little Sasha – had been conveniently on the spot with that hick Johnson in their new powered armor on a demo tour to stop it cold. All staged, of course, to make their product look good. Though the families of the eleven dead and thirty-five wounded in Tokyo wouldn’t appreciate learning that fact. Even if he could prove it.

And where he and Rhodey had shown up just in time to look like complete clueless idiots. It was that utter press nightmare of over two weeks back that was one reason Maria Hill was still so pissed at him. But not pissed enough be stupid. She’d called him first when the other-him’s suit had appeared in New York, after all.

“No. Pretty sure Hill gave him an earful on that already,” Rhodey said with a sour look. “I’m still trying to wash the slimy feeling off War Machine for being in the same city as that Detroit Steel poser though.”

Rhodey worked on his doughnut and coffee in silence then while Tony went back to checking designs. He signed off on a whole batch of them in short order after making only minor changes or noting fabricating concerns for Wyche to address where he thought necessary. Sent them back. His phone was blinking at him – probably more messages from Pepper – but he ignored it. He was making up great ground on his backlog of work today even without her prodding. Maybe he should skip out on the office more often in the mornings. Particularly if there were fresh doughnuts.

Rhodey was rooting around in the box trying to decide on his second when he asked softly, “Tony, did you stop sleeping with other men because of Cap?”

“What?” Tony said, heart jerking in his chest, breath catching in his throat. His gaze fixed blankly on the drawing in front of him.

Rhodey abandoned his search for another doughnut. Put his hands flat on the table in front of himself.

“Everybody knows how much you admire him, Tony,” he said. “He’s your childhood hero. Hell, you pretty much built up and turned the Avengers over to him, paying all the bills, dealing with most of the press, just to give him something to live for back then. And then… shit, well I never want to see you like you were after his funeral again, Tony. Jesus Christ. _Ever_. You’ve always gone to crazy lengths to keep the guy happy. So is that why you play straight?”

“No,” Tony said, swallowing hard. He raised his head slowly. Looked at the concern, the worry, the building unease on Jim Rhodes’ face even as his mind ran, frantically, over the implications of all he’d said. _Rhodey didn’t know._ He honestly didn’t know how Tony really felt about Steve. He’d outplayed himself with his years of denial even to one of his oldest friends. Hidden the source of his feelings too well. Rhodey had been trying to _defend_ him. But apparently he’d made Steve think… and Rhodey thought... “No, that’s not it.”  

“Oh fuck,” Rhodey said, looking suddenly as ill as Tony felt. “I didn’t think of it until later… Damn it, Tony, I swear I didn’t. You play your damn cards too close to your chest! You always have!”

He shut down the tablet that was still in front of him and slid it away across the table, gently, to keep himself from throwing it at the window. “It’s fine, Rhodey.”

Rhodey jumped to his feet and started to pace, his pilot’s hands moving restlessly. “No it isn’t! I unloaded on him, Tony. Damn it. On the way back, when he asked me if you really were bi… I accused him of being a close-minded bastard – Cap! I said that to Cap! The man who puts on and takes off other people’s superpowers like they’re a fresh tee shirt! And all this time… _fuck_.”

“Don’t worry about it, Rhodey,” Tony made himself say. “Steve and I understand each other.”

Rhodey stopped pacing then to stare at him, anguished. “You’re not looking at your own face right now, Tony. Damn it. I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know.”

“It’s done, Rhodey. It’s fine.” He gave Rhodey a restrained smile, lifted his chin high and stared his old friend in the eye until he finally heaved a sigh and nodded. Rhodey took the few steps back to the table until he was standing beside Tony’s chair, brows lowered, expression still pained. And Tony didn’t need that. Didn’t need Rhodey hating himself for trying to protect his friend. Tony knew who was to blame here. It wasn’t anyone other than himself.

Rhodey put his hand on his shoulder and squeezed once, holding on tight for a moment longer before he finally gave Tony a small smile. Tony smiled for real then too, tamping down hard on everything that was still roiling in his gut. “Getting back to our real business, I need you to do me a favor, Lt. Colonel Rhodes of the U.S. Marine Corp. _Before_ the big flashy party I’m throwing this Friday.”

Rhodey raised his brows warily, clearly puzzled and still unsettled. Tony just smiled wider. “I need you to shine up every medal you’ve got, put on your best uniform and fly back to Arlington and make General Babbage an offer he really shouldn’t refuse.”

~*~

After all was said and done, Tony wasn’t all that surprised Babbage turned down the loan of War Machine flat. He knew the name Tony Stark and every name associated with it wasn’t very popular in Washington much now. And it probably wouldn’t be again unless he started making weapons for the US Government once more, Tony thought in disgust after Rhodey called to update him with the bad news.

In more bad news, it looked like War Machine was going to be delayed returning by a day too. He was off doing something sneaky and secret in another part of the world for Commander Rogers’ black-ops Avengers again. Tony skipped his thoughts away from that deliberately. Not his business anymore.

Still, it hadn’t been entirely fair of him to make Rhodey go face the General’s venom alone, but, he’d had the best shot at getting Babbage to see reason. If Tony had gone himself it would have been a pure ass-chewing and finger-pointing session: he hadn’t been the one to put that maniac Norman Osborn in as his successor, but they still all conveniently seemed to forget that fact. Tony was fairly certain now that Babbage was where the Hammer ladies were getting their intel and access. In his jaded experience, the guy who signed the multi-billion dollar defense contracts was usually the best place to look first. Especially if there was treason involved. Those old suits of his… Osborn’s HAMMER had used them, but SHIELD should have locked them down again once they got control back.

Hill was slipping at SHIELD. Or holding out on him out of spite. He wasn’t quite sure which would be worse. Either way, he was ready to write her and SHIELD – and Commander Rogers – out of his scenarios for the near future.

What he needed was to focus. Focus on his car and the 21-Green Expo that was only three weeks out now. Focus as little time as necessary on what exactly Hammer thought they were going to do with their low-grade derivative tech, Detroit Steel.

Basically he needed to focus on everything other than how badly he’d continued to fuck up the few friendships he had left since his other-dimensional self appeared.

But he really needed to stop sleeping with the women he picked up in elevators or coffee shops. He turned his head to look at the tousled blonde hair scattered on the pillow next to his.

Her name was… Janine? Julie? Jennifer?

It was no good. He couldn’t remember. Which was going to be extremely awkward in a couple of hours, Tony thought wearily. All he knew was she’d laughed too hard at his weak jokes. He laid an arm over his eyes and sighed into the darkness. It was barely three. He’d had maybe an hour and a half of sleep after they were done and post-coital exhaustion thankfully hit.

It was getting to be just too much trouble to try to remember their names in the morning in order to make the hour or two of sleep it let him catch worth it, he thought as he rolled out of this latest woman’s bed as quietly as he could.

~*~

Hill called him while he was waist deep under the alpha test car’s rear axle, installing feedback sensors on the back half of the all-wheel power train personally because he hadn’t had his hands on anything solid in far too long. Macken and Wyche were there too, putting in the new brakes. He let the Iron Man cover his head for privacy and continued working.

“Avengers meeting isn’t for a few more days still, Hill, and I don’t get my Tower back until the end of the month. You guys hired movers yet? Because I’m serving eviction papers on SHIELD the second those electronic signatures are certified.” His hands moved automatically. Connect. Crimp. Test. Bridge. Connect. Tie up the wires. Clip them to the chassis. Make certain there weren’t any fray points.

Hill glared at him, her arms folded across her chest, her expression severe on his HUD. “We’re nearly cleared out, Stark, relax. But good luck getting other tenants in there – the place gets blown up way too often.”

“Please, it’s _Manhattan_. I’ll have those open floors rented by the end of two months.”

She just rolled her eyes at him. “You know, I’m getting tired of always being the one who calls you first, Stark,” she said. “But at least this time it’s orders.”

“Oh?”

“Commander Rogers needs a consult.”

Tony’s pulse jumped in alarm. But he managed to keep his expression neutral, his tone cool. “Some reason he can’t call me himself?”

“He’s in the field,” she said with a shrug. “All he told me to say was this: Vanishing Point Generator.”

His hands froze on the start of bundling the next set of connectors. “Where’s the rendezvous?”

Her grin was like a shark’s that had scented blood. “Twenty miles west of Rocksprings, Texas.”

The exact coordinates pinged on his internal HUD map. He raised his brows high. “The middle of nowhere?”

“Of course, Stark, where else would _you_ go to investigate a destroyed secret base of evil?”

~*~

The Iron Man touched down on a slightly higher piece of rolling scrubland in the non-descript landscape of western Edwards County, Texas. The sky above was covered by bands of thin, high clouds, cutting the glare of the sun down to a hazy, too-bright glow. Heavy oak trees grew in ravines while patches of dark green-gray brush covered most of the rest of the arid, tan landscape. Tony supposed some would think the place scenic, but to him it was little more than a wasteland, empty of much human impact.

Except for the smoldering black crater that gaped open beneath the hilltop, exposing a far deeper limestone cave complex beneath it, of course. The hole was filled with twisted metal and shattered concrete and small pockets of residual power signatures. And there was the man in the blue-and-white uniform standing with one foot braced on a rock beside him, arms folded over his broad chest, to bring interest to the landscape too.

“Iron Man,” Commander Rogers said without turning to face him, his attention focused on the pit below. “Thanks for coming on short notice.”

Tony looked around the area casually, away from the other man, the Iron Man taking note of possible contacts and targets automatically. There was a visually obscured hover vehicle of significant size a few miles to the south of them, just within scanning range, that he’d already logged on the way in. But that was it except for some minor wildlife and a few ranch animals in the distance. They were virtually alone out here.

“No problem,” he said, his voice sounding surprisingly normal in his own ears. “But if you’re looking for my considered and rather expensive professional opinion, something very large definitely went boom down there. Doubt there’s much left to consult on here, Commander.”

Steve Rogers shifted a little on his feet, angled his head toward him. “There is something down there I need your take on, actually, but mostly I wanted to talk to you.”

Tony raised his brows inside his helmet, body tensing slightly. He’d come here, he reminded himself, because the request had been routed through Hill. Which meant it was official business. Safer for their first meeting after the last one, he’d estimated. Because it wasn’t like Steve to abuse his position just to bring up personal matters. Apparently, in this uniform, he was far less strict on that point. Something to remember.

“Sure thing,” Tony said warily. “Consult first?” 

Steve turned to face him then, a distinctly wry look on his face. “Other way around, Tony. Or I’m pretty sure you’ll just find some excuse to take off once we’re done.”

Ah. Tony’s heart rate stepped up and he licked suddenly dry lips once, swallowing hard. “You’ve got McCoy on your team – he’s almost as good at deciphering strange tech as I am. You hardly need me here. I’ve got work to get back to.” His repulsors were ready to go. Always. He could be airborne in a fraction of a second; twenty-five miles away in a minute if he pushed Mach 2.

But Steve’s gaze was steady on him. Calm. Composed.  “Hear me out first?” he asked quietly. Then added a small, oddly uncertain, smile.

Pain lanced through Tony. He closed his eyes again, where Steve couldn’t see him, but somehow found himself nodding once anyway.

“There’s an intact entrance over here. Let’s at least get walking,” Steve said, and turned to the left, striding across the dry landscape toward a shallow dip in the ground. Tony made himself follow, loose rock, metal debris and other rubble scattered by the blast clanking slightly against his boots as he went. Tactically, he understood the change of scene perfectly: if Tony was underground it would be harder for him to run. He followed Steve inside anyway.

Behind a concealed door located at the bottom of the nearby fold in the ground was a reinforced concrete hallway. It sloped down at a steep grade, angling them in the direction of the larger, crumbled explosion site. The tunnel was lit by diffused emergency LEDs, still linked to some surviving power source. They moved down it in silence, until they reached what had probably been a security checkpoint room. It was also lit by emergency lighting only, throwing most of the place into deep shadow. There were a table and chairs scattered across the floor. Broken video monitors and smashed computer terminals. An empty weapons cabinet. A cracked wire-mesh reinforced window looked out into stygian darkness beyond, a warped metal door mostly closed beside it.

“Completely evacuated,” Steve said as he came to a stop by the overturned table, glancing around the room and shrugging. “They didn’t leave us much to go on here.”

“They?” Tony asked from just inside the doorway, and Steve looked back at him, lips quirked, until Tony added, “Yeah, yeah, not now. I get it.”

“We’ve scanned and searched the place for hidden monitoring, and it came back clear. I’d like you to do another. Just in case,” Steve said. For his peace of mind, he meant. But Tony just nodded and set the Iron Man to work, checking for bugs, taps or other, more subtle, passive devices. Everything electronic had a signature. The fact that whatever high-powered device they’d used here had obviously blown – or, more accurately based on his view of the blast pattern, _imploded_ – it was easier for him to detect that kind of thing here. After a few silent minutes where nothing blared on his HUD but his own blood pressure, he shook his head and reduced the scan intensity of the suit.

“It’s clean in here,” he said reluctantly. “The whole place is pretty much dead, at least for about 800 meters radius. After that…”

“Later,” Steve said, taking a deeper breath before adding, “Could you take the helmet off at least, Tony? I’d like to talk to you instead of the Iron Man right now.”

“I don’t think so,” he said. Meaning it. But Steve kept that steady look on him, his eyes clear of shadows in the glow of Tony’s RT, and he knew he was just being a coward. A worse coward than his other self had accused him of being. Because he had no convenient amnesia to give him any excuses now. With a thought the helmet flickered away, slipping back into his system to wait.

He took a shuddering breath, tasting the faintly smoky air. Smelled scorched electronics and burned plastic. Dust and charred oil. Tried to brace himself. Then lifted his eyes and met Steve’s gaze with his. Steve smiled at once. Gently. “Thank you, Tony.”

He could feel the urge rising inside of him to take over the conversation before it could even start. To deflect. To distract. To try to protect himself somehow from what he knew had to be coming. He didn’t want this conversation to happen at all. But he really couldn’t stop it either, short of leaving. This was Steve. He’d been too long without him to back away from him now. Even if this was finally the end.

Steve’s face was somber as he looked at him. “I know I handled things badly the last time we met. I wanted to apologize for that, and for before when—.”

“You don’t have to,” Tony cut in. His heart was pounding already. His gut aching.   

“I do,” Steve shot back firmly, standing upright and tall on both feet and facing him directly. “I made assumptions that hurt you. Misread certain things for far too long. Asked questions I had no business asking. All I can say is that I was startled by it all, by her, by how much she seemed like you… how much she is like you. As well as by what she said before she left.  And then Rhodes…”

Steve hesitated and Tony’s throat felt raw, his chest tight, and even behind the wall of his armor, without the helmet he felt exposed. Was exposed.

“Rhodes implied that it was my fault you’d chosen to deny who you are. That something I’d said or done made you uncomfortable enough to believe I would disapprove.”

“No, you didn’t. You did nothing,” Tony said, shaking his head, heart thudding heavily in his chest, hands clenching at his sides, the dull click of armor plates rubbing against each other loud in the near-silence. “Are you with Sharon?”

Steve looked startled for a moment, taken aback as much by the abruptness of the question as by the demand for the kind of personal detail that Tony had seldom asked him for before. But finally he answered, “We’re... we’ve been trying. Things are a little rough, sometimes. She has… doubts.”

“Then none of this matters, Steve,” he said, spitting the words out with force, aching and aching inside as he began to destroy everything he’d ever wanted most. Because he had to. “It never has.”

“Tony, you have…”

“Don’t!” he shouted into the echoing deadness of the ruined base. Where there was nothing and no one to distract either of them from the inevitable end now. He forced his voice down from a shout. Drew on the hard-won skill learned from every accusing board meeting, every vicious press conference to bring his voice under control again. Continued quickly, his tone clipped but even, his face blank. “Don’t try to fix anything. Or make amends you don’t have to. I accept your apology. I just still hope to be counted a friend, Steve. That’s all. Honestly. Nothing else matters.”

Steve’s expression stilled while he spoke, going flat, forbidding. As Tony finished, his body tensed and a shudder went through him before he exploded into motion. Tony barely had time to react – to throw his armored arms wide instead of forward – before Steve’s hands were on the shoulders of the suit, shoving him back into the concrete wall. The helmet covered his head automatically before it bounced off the hard surface. Sealing him away again. His HUD flared with warnings about his vital signs, the spikes hard and erratic. He felt like he was choking. Like his heart would pound out of his chest, light-headed and desperate for the touch of Steve’s hands, aching at his proximity.

“Damn it, Tony, stop doing that and _listen to me!_ ” Steve bellowed before he visibly caught himself. Reined in his anger and deliberately gathered his control again, his gaze wary, assessing, filled with regret. And only he could break Steve’s composure like this. For no one else would Steve lose his legendary patience so easily over so little. Oil and water. Forever repelled by surface tension and molecular bonds impossible to meld without destroying one or the other.

“What do you want to say, Steve?” Tony replied, his voice sounding too raw, too broken, even through the modulation of the suit. “That it’s sweet that I’ve been stupid in love with you for over ten years? That it’s okay my feelings are out of control ever since I wiped my own mind clean because I couldn’t live with my grief and my guilt after you were killed? Are you going to pat me on the head now? Tell me it’s okay to lust after you? That you don’t mind that I can barely be in the same room with you anymore without wanting to touch you? Kiss you? Fuck you?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth, Tony,” Steve said, his voice low, rough, his gaze fierce. “Don’t assume. Take off the armor again.”

“No,” he said, gritting his teeth, trying to take in more air to fight the lightness in his head, but only managing quick, shallow breaths that never filled his lungs quite enough. Steve’s hands on his shoulders flexed. Tightened. The suit automatically measured the force of his grip, displaying it in a corner of the HUD as it compensated, reacted, protected. Enough force to tear ligaments, crack bone if he’d been without it, yet Tony felt nothing inside the suit but a slight squeeze.

“Sometimes I hate this armor you wear, Tony. I hate it so much,” Steve said, his head bent, his shoulders shaking, his body going rigid as he sucked in deep, steadying breaths between bursts of words. “You talk to me from behind it, keeping yourself away, keeping me away. Leaving me only words to go by. Words you can spin to whatever angle you need at a moment’s notice until I can’t tell up from down with you. Truth or fiction. Pretense or honesty.”

He looked up into the Iron Man’s face and his eyes blazed. “Take off the damn helmet again, Tony. Take it off.”

Tony sucked in another barely adequate breath. “I can’t.”

“You can. You _won’t_ ,” Steve said sharply, flexing his hands against Tony’s armored shoulders, grinding metal against concrete, his expression bleak. “For so many years, you wouldn’t take it off. You hid behind it, separated yourself into Tony Stark and Iron Man. Wanted me, everyone to believe you were two people. And you were: you were Mr. Stark and you were Shellhead.” Tony flinched over a nickname not heard for a long time. Not from Steve. “Shellhead was my friend. First. Before any other in this time. My friend _was_ the armor. But now that I know _you_ are the friend inside the armor, I hate the armor sometimes. Because you still won’t take it off.”

The hands on his shoulders finally relaxed their crushing grip. Slid down to his upper arms. Circled them. Held him in place without pinning him. Steve’s expression was pained, unhappy.

“You want me to let this go. To just forget how you feel. Ignore your pain. And yet you still won’t even give me the honesty of your own face when you say it. So how can I believe that that’s the right thing to do, Tony?”

“I was, I did,” Tony protested hoarsely, lifting his hands to put them against Steve’s ribs, palms flat, fingers spread.

There was death in his palms, in his fingertips. He knew it. Steve knew it. Still he couldn’t stop himself. And Steve made no move away.

The sensors of the suit registered pressure and temperature, measured the resilience of the flesh under the thin layer of armored uniform, the compressive strength of the bone beneath. Relayed it first to his HUD as data, then relayed it back down to his hands via the nano-filament lining as a faint pressure on his skin, a hint of warmth, enough so he could react to it. But he didn’t feel _Steve_. It was a simulation. The suit relaying it, approximating. He wasn’t _touching_ him.

“I’m not _offended_ by your desires, Tony, no matter how crude you’re trying to be about them,” Steve said, his brows drawn down, his mouth taut. His gaze fixed on Tony’s through the helmet, with the uncanny precision Steve always displayed. He couldn’t avoid those eyes. Looked into them and drowned. “I’m not angry either, even though you seem to believe I have to be. I just… don’t know. I don’t know what to do. About this. For my friend. For _you_. I don’t know… what’s _right_.”

Tony let his hands fall away. Just like with the random women, the simulation wouldn’t do anymore. The longing was too strong.

“I don’t know either,” Tony whispered. And it sounded exactly like the admission of defeat it was.

Steve’s hands on his arms flexed tighter for an instant, his eyes closing, his mouth thinning.

“I’ll… we’ll figure something out, Tony,” Steve said quietly, almost like a vow. “Just… we will. You’re one of my oldest friends. We’ll find a way.”

Tony let his head thump back against the wall, his body sagging slightly within the armor. Steve’s proximity – the broad chest, the heavy arms, the strong thighs – was bearing on him, eating away at his nerves. Steve’s body. Steve’s self. Steve’s faith. Those longing thoughts he rarely allowed himself to indulge bubbling free even as he struggled to lock them down again. Back where they belonged. Nowhere.  

Steve drew himself up slowly, as Tony stayed silent, finally releasing Tony’s arms and drawing away. He turned his head and looked toward the cracked window, the warped door that led further into the ruined base, the profile Tony knew so well showing stern and resolute.

“Well, I called you down here for another reason too. Let’s go,” Steve said, striding toward the door. He wrenched it open with both hands, the blast-twisted metal screeching reluctantly across concrete, the ropes of muscles flexing in his back, across his shoulders beneath the dark blue uniform as he worked mesmerizing to Tony, and then stepped through.

Tony watched him go, dazed for a few seconds more, then he straightened away from the wall and followed Steve Rogers into the unknown and the darkness beyond.

~*~

After picking their way through the crushed rubble of the central base – a large portion of which was missing due to the implosion of the Vanishing Point Generator – they came to a section of wide natural limestone caverns that lead steadily downwards.

A Vanishing Point Generator wasn’t an Earth-based – or locally usable – technology, Tony knew. It was a subspace tunnel creator. But subpace tunnels were ineffective over short distances. They only worked on a large scale. A _very_ large scale. Such as inter-stellar. Or, more relevantly to his mind, on an inter-planetary scale. Mars. This place, Tony figured, had to have had something to do with Steve and Rhodey’s recent trip to Mars.

It was clear to him that their tunnel had been detonated from the inside. Tony had his suspicions about what had caused the subspace passageway to collapse and ingest itself. Because it took a lot of energy to generate, or conversely, to override the quantum walling. A _lot_ of energy. Which he wasn’t reading a strong enough source of anywhere nearby. Unless Steve’s mysterious bad guys had been _complete_ idiots and put the power source right next to the generator itself. But the damage here hadn’t been large enough to explain that serious a goof, he mused, looking around the area with all sensors running.

Or, he supposed, the surviving baddies might have taken their power supply _with_ them when they cleared out, if it was exotic enough. God knew there was enough strange alien tech floating around on Earth to justify that thought. 

Steve lead him even deeper into the caves in silence, following an intermittent trail of low-power emergency lights. He’d obviously been this way before and knew the route, picking his way easily through the rubble. He was also leading them closer to the low-level power source Tony’d detected on his first scans of the area. Some kind of battery back-up or emergency generator, he figured.

They finally came to a stop at the rear of one of the larger caverns. The emergency lights ended there too, apparently cut off from power when walls fell or maybe directly crushed by falling limestone. There was a bit of structural damage to the caves in the area. Not enough to make them unsafe, just difficult to walk through. Tony launched a small repulsor remote from his suit high into the air and it cast a cone of bright white light down over the wall in front of them.

Not a wall. Instead a set of nine massive pipes, four meters in diameter each, loomed beyond, completely blocking the entire end of the cavern with their run, their true bulk only hinted at by the light from the small remote.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” Steve said, standing with feet spread, arms over his chest. He was looking at Tony rather than at the pipes, however, his expression contemplative.

Tony stared at the whole assembly for a moment in silence, frowning inside his helmet.

“So this is how they powered their Vanishing Point Generator. Must be a hell of a thermal tap they have down there.” He turned to Steve and shrugged. “McCoy knows what this is. It’s harmless. Why call me?”

“Henry did tell me what it is; the largest flash-steam geothermal power plant he’s ever seen,” Steve said, watching Tony closely for some reason, his gaze intent on him even though he was still wearing the Iron Man. “And he said the maximum capacity of this installation is nearly 2000 megawatts.”

Tony nodded in agreement. He’d have to see the actual generators to be certain of that estimate but Beast’s word was good enough for him at the moment. “It would have to be close to that to make their tunnel to Mars stable,” he added absently, shifting closer to the huge pipes where they emerged from the ground and using the Iron Man to scan for the banks of generators and pumps that had to be nearby. Found them in another, larger, cave to the south, off a branching cavern. Idle and powered down, which was why he’d missed them before. And these big boys here were apparently just the piping for the steam. He ran a quick thermal scan. Still running a toasty 175 degrees C even with the pumps shut down. The source had to be far, far hotter. An ideal set-up. The condensed water returns were likely elsewhere. He checked his HUD. Yep. Twenty-five meters west.

Steve laughed ruefully, shook his head. “How did you…? Never mind, I should know by now not to underestimate your ability to put things together from hardly any data, Tony.”

He shrugged that away. “So why call me here for this, Steve? It’s not going to blow up. It’s just going to sit here.”

Steve turned to him, one brow cocked significantly. “Because I want your advice on what to do with it.”

“My advice?” he repeated, taken aback.

“It’s an excellent power source, clean, infinitely renewable, already installed. The people who built it… won’t be back.” Steve frowned briefly then shrugged. “So what do I do with it?”

Tony turned back to face the pipes. Fought back a sudden thickening in his throat, struggling with a surge of nameless emotion behind the Iron Man’s helmet.

Then the words came. “Who has the water rights here? Do they extend that deep? This was an unauthorized installation, certainly done in violation of environmental policy – though this _is_ Texas, they hardly give a shit. An asset seized during commission of a crime too – not that you can ever charge them for it. You’re still not subject to the Comprehensive Crime Control Act are you? No. International venue. Terrorism. Probably not. Hm. Give it to NASA? It frees up room in their budget if they don’t have to pay power bills. Or if they want to sell the power on the open market, so much the better. More money for them. But they really don’t have the expertise to manage that.” His mind began to race with other ideas, to formulate plans for who to contact, how best to manage this windfall. “Or… it might be better to set up a non-profit power management company for it up-front. One that can accept petitions for low cost power usage, for either residential subsidies or research purposes. The real problem is delivery… there aren’t any transmission lines out here.”

He looked around speculatively, moving closer to the walls to look for more gaps around the pipes, potential routing sites, scanning the cave structure more closely again for stability and access. They’d passed a few cables leading off toward the cratered part of the base, but nothing going to the surface.

It would take some significant investment of capital to get adequate lines in, get them routed up to the surface, connected to the national grid, but nothing prohibitive. Nothing like the cost to build this whole plant from scratch would have been. He tried not to let himself be distracted by wondering which of several, rather nasty, organizations had the sheer available funds to build this thing at all, much less in such secrecy.

“I should get Potts on this. Work the spin on how to sell it. Can’t say it’s a bonus from beating an evil secret organization now can we?”

He looked over his shoulder then to see Steve watching him with something like fondness, a smile breaking slowly over his face. “And that is _exactly_ what I wanted you here for, Tony.”

~*~

The minor sense of reprieve he felt after the trip to Texas lasted only until the Stark Resilient gala at the Space Needle that Friday night. Because the Hammer ladies gleefully took the bait he’d set.

Rhodey was still watching him with some concern, but he was there for support as Tony moved among the shallow, fickle, self-indulgent people who held some of the purse strings to his future.  Not his people, no matter what Pepper and Rhodey said. Not anymore. If ever. His people wore ridiculous costumes and put their lives on the line for others for no reason other than that they couldn’t ever stand by and do nothing.

Every other member of Stark Resilient was there too. Nervous, but present, in their monkey suits. Doing their best to sell the car hard. And Mrs. Arbogast, smiling and confident as she shook hands and took names. While Pepper was as gorgeous and untouchable as always, riveting Tony’s attention. They circled each other warily. Worked the room in tandem. She shone like a star, so vibrant and alive, and he wanted to do nothing but bask in her radiance.

But as soon as mother and daughter Hammer appeared… He took her hand in his. Kissed the back of it. And then Tony immediately set himself to sweep the daughter, Sasha Hammer, off her feet with every ounce of the infamous Tony Stark charm he could still summon.

It was less than five minutes before he was helping her into his shiny gold Aston Martin One 77 convertible, a feral smile on her face, a matching gleam in his own eyes. Most of that time had been spent on the achingly slow elevator ride down.

It seemed forever before downtown Seattle was safely behind them, but Tony managed to keep her talking as he reached the turnoff to SR 599. They traded vicious barbs and not-so-veiled insults as he followed the highway down to where it would hug the bends of the Green River through industrial zones that were largely empty this time of night, and long before it ultimately met up with busy Interstate 5 to the south again.

He was trying to get them as far from the heavily populated parts of the city as he could before she tried to kill him, of course.

It had been a surprisingly warm night. So the roof of the car was down. Her dress was short and tight, her eyes bright with hatred as she played with her opera gloves. Stroking them. Tugging on them in elaborate, practiced ways. He thought she was trying to make it seductive, turn it into a tease or an erotic promise, but he knew she was doing it because her muscles were aching, her nerves jittering, her skin crawling.

He’d taken off his tuxedo jacket, cummerbund and the bowtie Rhodey had had to help him tie because he’d forgotten how before they got into the car. Because those were actual clothing. Unlike the shirt or the pants. And when she ran her hand teasingly down his thigh, the slowly dying buzz of the cyber-organic enhanciles buried in her flesh made the Iron Man lying on his skin, resting in his bones scream again in sympathetic protest.

“Sex and death, right? Isn’t that your thing? The Tony Stark thing?” she mocked as she climbed into his lap. With her hands like claws on his shoulders, she spread her thighs over the top of the steering wheel, the rest of her body bent forward into his face to obscure his view as her long black hair whipped wildly around his head in the wind.  

“You’re not my type,” he said, flashing his photo-op smile into her bared teeth, and steered safely around the few other cars on the road with hands made of Iron Man.

“Bleeding edge tech makes me so hot. Tell me more,” she said, looking hungrily down at the nanometal-composites on his arms where they disappeared between her thighs. And so he did.

He accelerated until he hit 135 mph, dodging startled drivers and late night truckers, and made it to the darkened, relatively isolated dip that led up to the Pacific Highway South junction that he’d been heading for before he had taunted her enough about Zeke Stane to make her power up her dying implants and whip strands of mono-filament bio-silicate filled with crackling energy across his lap and slice the car in two.

“I know who your father is, Sasha,” he told her.

“We’re going to make you obsolete, Stark!” she screamed.

The Iron Man was far more durable than his Aston Martin. He rolled out of the flames and twisted metal, wrestling and fighting with her, poking her ego and burning precious energy out of her implants until she spilled more information than she should have. Let the fight go on until she tore open the entire side of a car unlucky enough to be caught on the same road as them. The driver somehow managed to get his car under control, managed not to crash as Tony tackled her back off the highway and onto the verge.

Then Rescue hurled an already-burning wreck into her, ordered her to stand down, and Sasha took to the sky.

“Tony, she’s…” Pepper said, her voice high, her stance showing her ready to take flight in pursuit. He put one hand on her shoulder to stop her, his blood singing with adrenaline too, but knowing when and how to use it better than Pepper did yet. She was still new to being Rescue. Still learning the craft he’d spent far too many years of his life on already. The years he still remembered.

“She’s running home to mommy. Let her,” he said, still shuddering from the lingering, cloying touch of dying bio-nanotech. “Now we know for sure what she can do. And she thinks she knows what we can do.” He smiled viciously inside his helmet. “It’s our turn now.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Hacking away at more Invincible Iron Man – Stark Resilient Book 2 stuff for a while. Paraphrasing (and quoting, ugh) done of stuff that is Matt Fraction’s and not mine. I’m just trying to work Tony out of the sheer logic fails he left behind. Also, nods to Secret Avengers Book 2 - Eyes of the Dragon, but less direct, again amending events to suit my devious fan fiction needs. Steve’s books are much more fun than Tony’s. (bonus Beast! Yay!) 
> 
>  --Dear Ao3, please don't eat random paragraphs. Thanks, pax
> 
> ~*~*~*~*~

Bambi Arbogast was worth her weight in diamonds, no, in raw, pure vibranium, Tony thought with inward glee. He was still riding the last of the battle-rush from the fight with Sasha Hammer as he approached the podium of a hastily-rented meeting room at the Crowne Plaza downtown for the press conference she’d arranged. It was nearly 2 AM and the room was full. It was a smallish room, granted, but this was Seattle, not New York, and they weren’t as used to superhero activity in their vicinity. At least not since the last time he’d lived here – which had to have been four or five years ago now.

On the outside he was grim-faced, stoic, determined. While in his head, things had snapped into place with vivid clarity. He had enemies to fight. A battle to focus on rather than things that couldn’t be helped. He was lost in the thrill of move and counter-move, all the lingering unease, the sense of exposure, of longing swept aside by the consuming need to manage the obvious threat, the attack just survived, the _now_.

He’d reformed his tuxedo pants and shirt, left off the tie and put back on the cummerbund. Left his hair disheveled, wore the jacket crumpled from the valet’s inexpert handling, and met the flash of cameras and the glazed looks of the vaguely intimidated local news reporters with steel in his eyes.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for coming so late,” he said, standing up straight in front of the room, Rhodey, still in uniform, strategically placed off to his right, Pepper, in her gorgeous dress again, her face pale with the aftermath of battle, standing beside him. “There’s going to be talk in the next few days and I wanted to let you hear it from me first before the rumor mill gets cranking. Tonight, while escorting a young lady home from the Stark Resilient Gala, I was the victim of an assassination attempt by terrorists.”

He paused a moment for effect as murmuring among the crowd started, raising a hand to stem questions, his gaze hard.

“Apparently, someone doesn’t like that Stark Resilient is building you a tomorrow that’s free of dependence on fossil fuels. They found out the hard way that you can’t kill Iron Man and that you can’t keep American ingenuity down.

Now as you can understand, I can’t say anything more than that, and I’ll be fully cooperating with the NSA, Homeland Security and –,” This was calculated, “—Wait, what is Steve calling SHIELD these days? Well, with the Avengers and all the rest. Clearly we’re making the right people mad. Thank you for your continued support. Good night – well, good morning I suppose – and God Bless America.”

“No questions,” Tony said as he breezed out afterwards through the shouted questions, his expression carefully determined and serious, completely hiding his eagerness, with Pepper and Rhodey on his heels, “and no further comment. Sorry, people. Have to talk to the authorities now, you understand.”

The press conference missed the 11 o’clock news, of course, but hit the overnight national feed and burned its way across the internet on the heels of the shaky, under-lit cell phone videos that had already hit YouTube, of Iron Man fighting against something small, that moved too fast, was lost amid flaring strips of red in the night, and just after the local news added the obligatory helicopter shots of burning cars, fire trucks and police barricades set around a shattered highway to the mix. The shots of his One 77 in two pieces – cut cleanly down the middle – were by far the most popular images.

 _Sex and death_. Sasha Hammer had taunted him with that phrase and he felt the beat of it in his veins. Sex. No, not sex. It was the sex he couldn’t have that drove him now. And always the threat of the death that waited for him when his ideas finally ran down. He’d run himself into that corner once already. Wiped his own mind when nothing else would work. But this time… This time Steve was safe. Elsewhere. Away from his plans. And this time he _wasn’t_ going down.

He swept out of the hotel – Team Iron Man on his heels – ready to fight. Already looking at Pepper, at Rhodey, ignoring the wrinkled brows, the tightened lips, the pointed exchange of glances. Rhodey shook his head at Pepper and Tony knew that gesture meant they were trying to figure out the best way to manage him. To slow him down. It wasn’t possible. He needed to move. To act now. Hammer had flinched finally and he wasn’t going to let them recover, let them focus again. The frustration left from Tokyo surged in him, overcoming more recent concerns. Steve. His other-self and her deliberate destruction of what little he had left of a personal life.

“I need everyone in at Resilient now. _Everyone_ , Potts. And get Mrs. Arbogast on the press again. I want every major channel and independent news site out at the track. We’re demoing the alpha car at 9 AM. That’s right on time for lunch back East. I want this on everyone’s phones while they’re sitting down to their three-martini strategy sessions. Live. I want them to _see_ what’s taking them down, all of them,” he said, giddy again as they slid into the back of the hired limo.

“It’s _Saturday_ , Tony,” Pepper said, her gaze worried. “When did you last sleep?”

He let the question pass unanswered. “Even better. Slower news day. Let’s go.” Rhodey just shook his head again. “You know they’re coming back,” he said to Tony.

“Of course they are. But I’m getting this shot off first.” He grinned wide at them both, focused, ready. No more longing. No more distractions. No more doubt. There never was once the shooting started.

~*~

The sky was gray, close. One of those low, gloomy, yet oddly warm Seattle mornings. Not ideal for the first public viewing of his repulsor car, but haste was more important right now than waiting for a day sunny enough for it to shine dramatically off the paint job.

The alpha car looked damn good anyway.

They were on the small oval track behind Wyche’s facility. Not the full test track. He’d wanted this close to home. At Resilient. The team had pushed the alpha car out just a few minutes ago. Even after several hours of furious last-minute prep, Wyche and Macken were still fussing over it like doctors with a fractious patient. Cababa and Pimacher were reviewing the system telemetry. Well, Cababa was. Pimacher was messing around with another silly new game app on his smart phone. A Detroit Steel web game, just to rub salt in the wound. Tony was really starting to wonder about his focus.

Of course, that probably didn’t excuse him chucking the guy’s phone across the track, but oh well.

Rhodey had vanished earlier that morning as War Machine. He’d left a cryptic message about being needed elsewhere. Which told Tony that Steve had his group hot on the trail of something big. Probably those baddies from the Texas base. It didn’t matter right now. Rhodey’d be back.

He still had Pepper watching him with concern. And Mrs. Arbogast. It had been a while since she’d worked for him, after all. She’d apparently forgotten how many people wanted to kill him. And how many of _those_ were actually willing to try.

Once around the track. That’s all he needed to prove his ideas were still viable.

For this demo circuit he wore regular safety gear instead of the Iron Man; this was a car for the people, not superheroes. Fire suit, helmet, HANS, gloves, boots. The whole works. Smiled with his helmet tucked under his arm. Posed by the car. Let the press shower them all with questions on the repulsor technology. The cost (deferred). The design. What colors it would be offered in.

Then everyone backed away. Let the cameras have unobstructed views as he climbed into the car. Strapped himself in. Put his hand on the starter.

And then it all went to hell.

~*~

He got his press. “Exploding Star-k.” “Resilient No More.” “Explosions Optional?” Were just a few of the pithier headlines that afternoon. To top it off, the sponsors cancelled the clean energy expo too. Just because he was attending. Because of the risk he posed to everyone by his very presence, apparently. Tony Stark. Superhero. Former Director of SHIELD. _And_ _huge fucking target_.

Tony was still reeling inside, but not from the explosion itself. He had a spy. Someone in Resilient was a spy. Working for Hammer. They’d rigged his repulsor car to blow and only the Iron Man had saved him.

Pepper he trusted. Rhodey – who wasn’t even there. The rest…

“Wyche!” The man whose production facility he’d co-opted. The man who had actually built most of the fucking car. The man he needed most right now, his resources being what they were. Tony found him on the plant floor, the blasted shell of the alpha car already on the diagnostic stand, wired in. That there was even that much of it left was a testament to the severe scaling down he’d done for the commercial-grade repulsor units. If it had been the War Machine’s unit in the car instead – much less his own or Pepper’s RT’s –, there wouldn’t have been _anything_ of the car left. Just a large-sized crater in the track.

Lit screens surrounded Wyche, diagnostic telemetry running on every one of them. He didn’t look up even when Tony yelled his name, just yelled back. “Tony. I’ve already – Come here, I don’t want to shout.” Tony sprinted down the stairs to the floor, to Wyche’s side.

“That should not have happened.” Wyche was still staring at the screens, his hand over his mouth, his eyes narrowed, brow furrowed low. Taking it nearly as personally as Tony was, it looked like. “I don’t mean in a cosmic injustice sense, I mean – I mean something ain’t right. I’ve already started running diagnostic forensics on the recovered pieces and—“

“It was rigged,” Tony said, voice cold, watching him closely. If it had been anyone other than _him_ in the car they’d be dead. Which made it attempted murder on top of sabotage. “I know.”

“How…” Wyche turned to face him, shock on his face. Shock could be faked. So many things could be faked. Even a whole person. He knew that. Knew it far too well. But that couldn’t be it. As part of their employment, he’d demanded mandatory drug and alcohol tests – and passed them over with Reed’s enhanced Skrull detector to boot. Everyone at Resilient was human. Still his blood thundered in his veins. Because one of them had betrayed him. Had it been Wyche?

“The Iron Man was running and processing the data while I was still in the heart of the repulsor detonation,” he said. “I knew before you guys even got over to me.”

Wyche jumped out of his chair. “You— you— then why…?”

Tony stepped into his personal space. Right up to him. Wyche swayed back, eyes widening in consternation, in discomfort, but he didn’t step away. “Why did I fire you, Wyche?”

“I—excuse me?”

“You heard me. Back in the day. Why. Did. I. _Fire you_?”

Wyche’s eyes shifted away from Tony’s fierce glare but he still didn’t try to back away. Didn’t try to run. “I don’t—I don’t know…”

“ _Think hard_.” Tony grabbed his shirt front in one hand. Yanked him closer and snarled in his face. The Iron Man stirred in his bones. Thickened over the skin of his hand. Flickered in his eyes.

Something close to terror made Wyche’s face pale. Then he blinked. Flushed red. “Pepper,” he finally said, looking hollow and awful, as if expecting death. “You fired me because of Pepper.”

Because of the looks he’d cast at her when Tony could only pine. The too-casual hands he’d dropped on her shoulder. The way he’d leaned too close. Sniffed at her hair when she wasn’t looking. While Tony’s chest had been encased in metal. While he had been stuck plugging himself into a wall every 24-hours to keep his damaged heart going. While Pepper had seemed oblivious to them both, with stars in her eyes for Happy Hogan alone. And Tony had been determined for her to stay that way; better off with the better man. The man who could be there for her all the time. Until Tony himself had taken him away… He wrenched his thoughts back to the now. He’d fired Carson Wyche back then because he couldn’t fire _himself_.

“Yes, yes I did.” Tony said, easing back, letting him go, the suit retreating, his pulse starting to slow. He had his answer. “And it was as mean and petty and venal a thing as I’ve ever done. And only you and I knew about it.”

He sat down at the closest console. Cleared it. Began to type in the debugger so they couldn’t be overheard. By anything.

_We have a spy._

Still shaken, Wyche sat down in the chair beside him. Reached across him to type below the error return: _Who?_

_Not me. Not you. Not P. Other than that…?_

The look Wyche gave him then was even more terrified than it had been when he’d grabbed his shirt. Then he took a deep breath. Found his courage and steadied himself visibly before nodding in understanding. Tony nodded back once in approval.

“A day and a half,” he said fiercely, holding up two fingers, his face grim. “Just you and me. They cancelled the expo too. That deadline’s gone. So we’re getting the beta car solid and running in less than two days, Wyche. We’re doing this on our own. First thing Monday morning. Second and final shot. Full public unveiling with a speed demo. You game?”

Wyche looked at him as if he were insane, throat working as if he wanted to protest the impossibility of it all. The beta car wasn’t close to ready, Tony knew. It still had systems three steps behind the alpha on it. They’d been focusing too much on the alpha. On trying to make the big, flashy showing. It would be a huge task now to bring the beta up to running condition. A task that would be made even more difficult by the fact that he couldn’t let anyone else touch the car – or anything on it – but the two of them. Not even he could do it alone in less than two days. Tony stared at Wyche narrowly, determination burning in him, all but willing him to agree.

“Yeah,” Wyche said slowly, his shoulders pulling back, his gaze clearing, meeting Tony’s steadily. “I’m game.”

~*~

Tony emerged briefly from the haze of work and concentration when Rhodey finally returned early Monday morning. He came with an offering of coffee and doughnuts again. He even brought enough for Wyche too.

“Why are creepy death cults always so creepy?” was all he said about where he’d been as he leaned against the wall of the sealed-off manufacturing bay to watch Tony chow down. Tony had locked out everyone else _but_ Pepper and Rhodey, ignoring the protests of the rest of the team. Macken had seemed the most upset, but he’d stayed all weekend to manage their materials demands anyway. Tony had still vetted everything that came in the door himself with the Iron Man. Made sure it was all clean.

In response to Rhodey’s comment, Tony just raised a brow, rolled his eyes and kept stuffing fats and sugars and caffeine into his system. Just a few hours more. That’s all the longer he had to hang on. He’d snatched a cat-nap here or there while parts were fabricating, but mostly he was running on the kind of adrenaline a prolonged battle brought. The kind of run that would leave him unconscious for two or three days once it finally burned out.

Wyche had slept a little bit more, but not much. He just looked blank for a moment at Rhodey’s apparent non sequitur, but finally shook his head, finished his doughnut and went back to work in the cabin of the car finishing the install of the ignition system. Tony knew they were almost done. Which was good. The demo was less than two hours away. Half an hour ago, Pepper had let him know the press and the curious were already showing up, filling the bleachers of the leased test track. The thrill of maybe watching him blow up again was drawing them in like flies. Just a few more details – mainly a final check of the engine itself and the ignition systems – and they’d be ready for the second demo of his repulsor car. This time _without_ the explosion. He hoped.

Rhodey hung around. Helped where he could, with tools and a spare hand. And only cornered him once, when he stopped to catch himself on the back spoiler after his vision had narrowed to a tunnel briefly.

“T, you okay?” Rhodey asked quietly, and the hand on Tony’s shoulder was too warm. Too real. By contrast he felt chilled. Hollow. But he had to get this done.

“Okay enough,” he muttered just for Rhodey’s ears. “I’ve got the RT.” And he did. He could feel it throbbing in his chest. Or maybe that was the ache of the weary muscle and flesh around it.

“You were running like a madman before I left. I’m back and you’re _still_ running. The RT’s no substitute for sleep, T, you told me that yourself.”

“This has to happen today, Rhodey,” he looked into his friend’s eyes. Saw the concern. The worry. It ate at him, but he couldn’t stop now. “I’ve pulled the world in to see this fucking car finally _run_ and I have to deliver. Or I won’t get taken seriously ever again.”

“I doubt that, Tony. You’re _you_. People always take you seriously.”

“Ha.” It wasn’t a laugh. More a statement. He shot Rhodey a sidelong look, mind spinning hazily. Remembered friction because of him. “How’re you ‘n the Commander?”

Rhodey’s gaze went veiled. His hand was still on Tony’s shoulder, he noted. Very warm. It squeezed slightly. “We’re good. He… we sorted some stuff out.” Rhodey sighed. “Our mission was a little rough, though. Thirteen got pinched for leverage on him. She was pretty pissed off by that. Val thinks—”

“None of my business. Don’t care,” Tony spat before he could go on, jerking his shoulder out from under Rhodey’s hand and dropping down to slide under the car and start his checks of the power train before Rhodey could add anything more. There was no reason for his heart to start racing over that. He was just tired. Exhausted. Raw. “Gotta finish here,” he called out from under the car. “Go help Pepper wrangle the public, wouldja? Tell her we’re still good for scheduled start time. If you let me get this done, chatterbox.”

There was silence above him for several long, aching moments.. “Okay, Tony,” Rhodey finally said. “Okay. I get it.”

~*~

The car started fine. Outside the pit tunnel where he waited inside the car, Wyche ready at the door, the stands were full. The cameras rolling. The media listening. He flexed his hands on the steering wheel and listened over his headset as Pepper went into her intro out there on the track. His mind blanked her words, focusing on the sounds of the car instead. Smooth, steady. The low hum of the repulsor engine as clear and pure as the ones in his suit.

“…without further ado: the _Stark Resilient!_ ” Pepper finished with flair. “Maybe,” she added in an undertone, heard only over the comm. Tony stifled a grimace as Wyche hauled on the chain to open the door and sunlight streamed inside.

Tony blinked. He had his sunshine today. He drove the car out into the morning light, moving slowly along the track, waving an arm out the driver’s window in pure showmanship. Came to a stop beside Pepper in her smart, classy suit, a huge smile on her face, the checkered flag fluttering in her hands as she joined in on the applause, while cheers and shouts came from the stands.

The car purred at the starting line like she’d been in his garage for years. Tony’s gaze fixed on the flag Pepper raised. Focused on the car. On the systems within.

“Don’t fall apart,” he whispered to the car, closing his eyes for a moment. Then opening them to look only at Pepper.

Just as Pepper dropped the checkered flag, and his foot slammed down on the accelerator, the car leaping forward, Pimacher jumped onto the track in front of Pepper, his arms flailing, shouting something. Tony slammed on the brakes inches away from his wide-eyed, sweating face.

“They’re coming here! Tony! Pepper! Hammer is coming!”

And then the swarm arrived. Surging over the ring of trees that surrounded the track. Hundreds of them. The crowd started screaming even before the first one hit the base of the stands. The blast sent Pim flying. He scanned them automatically: self-guided smart missile drones with medium-yield conventional warheads. Apparently more fuel than device -- they exploded messy. Fire splashed everywhere.

He was out of the car in an instant, the Iron Man forming around him. Scooped up Pepper and Pim and dumped them at the pit entrance, under concrete next to Wyche and a gaping Mrs. Arbogast. Then he launched himself into the air, repulsors firing.

The swarm of drones followed him. Some of them appeared to have plasma beams installed. Or all of them. It was hard to tell. Only a few of them were firing at a time. A proximity response? He dodged most of the beams easily. The armor absorbed the stray hit or two without problem.

“Ms. Potts, I’m sure this thought has already occurred to you,” he said as he blasted two of the drones out of the sky, “but this is a _terrible_ product launch.”

“You think?” she said. “Heading to the Rescue suit now…”

“We need to get the car out of here!” Wyche said over the comm, his tone wild. As soon as he could pay the man he was getting a raise, Tony thought, spinning to take out another of the ones firing at him.

“Roger that, Wyche,” he said, dodging another burst of plasma fire. “Need to clear the air a bit here first. Where the hell is everybody?”

“War Machine deploying now!” Rhodey’s call came as his suit appeared on Tony’s HUD amid the blaze of enemies.

“Getting suited up!” Pepper added, breathless. Rescue was still off-screen.

“I’m running data. Looks like a remote-operated drone swarm. Who’s controlling them… well, one guess. Hammer. They really have a hate-on for my car. But how and where they’re running them from, still pending.” War Machine shot high into the middle of the swarm following Tony and fired a spray of bullets that took out a few dozen drones at once in a cascade of explosions.

“Plan is: Divide and conquer. Rhodey, you and me knock as many out of the sky as we can.”

Rhodey said grimly, “Waaaay ahead of you there, boss.”

Tony shot one down behind him, spinning to keep his targets locked. “And Pepper… get the civilians evacuated while we draw fire and provide cover. I’ll get the car out.”

“Rescue to the Rescue, got it,” she said, and her suit finally appeared on his HUD too, sweeping around the stands toward the parking lot.

“Go Team Iron Man!” He shot toward the beta car, taking the chance while War Machine had most of the swarm’s attention. He had only a few left on his own tail, streaking in low.

“Hey, T!”

He was almost to the car. Focused. “Bit busy, Rhodey.”

“Remember how you said Hammer was behind this?”

The Iron Man lifted the beta car easily. He started to skim across the track with it in his arms, staying low, heading for the far side of the track. “What, like five seconds ago? Yeah? Why?”

“On your _six_ —!”

“Please step away from the vehicle!” The voice broke into their comms with a hiss as Detroit Steel slammed into his back. The car bounced out of his grip onto its wheels. Stayed upright. While the Iron Man ploughed deep into the concrete of the track beside it, Detroit Steel kneeling on his back.

“Man, I been waiting a long time for this.” An armored hand grabbed him around the ribs. Lifted him out of the concrete mess of the track a little ways and shook him once. Rubble rattled off the armor like rain. “Always wanted to see if I had it. Had what it takes _to take down Iron Man_.”

The suit was lifted, slammed back down into the ground again. Tony gritted his teeth, endured. The suit absorbed most of the force, but he still bounced. The breath caught in his throat. He sucked it back in. Smiled.

“Just you and a couple hundred of your closest friends, huh? Sure you don’t want to call in some more guys, Johnson?”

“Fuck you, Stark!” The armored hand slammed him down again, the second one twisting him around until he was facing upwards. Facing Detroit Steel. He heard the hum of something revving. His HUD flashed an alert.

“Tony fucking Stark!” Maria Hill yelled in his ear and he cursed himself again for giving her a priority code to interrupt his comm. At least his combat HUD kept him from having her furious glare in his way. “Why the hell is Western Air Defense McChord scrambling for your location?”

“Maria fucking Hill,” he replied between clenched teeth, blocking Detroit Steel’s chainsaw – a freakin’ chainsaw! – with his forearm as it ground against his shoulder, sparks flying. Intimidating weapon for civilians, but completely useless against another armored suit. Even with diamond-coated teeth. He blasted Johnson back off him with the front arc, then took out another three circling drones with hands spread wide, repulsors flaring. Johnson roared in fury. Tony let his mouth curve in a feral smile. “Because bad things happen to good people?”

“I have three branches of the US Armed Forces and the FAA all screaming hysterically at me about an invasion, Stark,” she continued. “What the _hell_ is going on out there?” He dodged Johnson’s staggering lunge after him. Took to the sky.

“You tell me, Hill,” he said, noting War Machine’s position – blowing up a cloud of drones, Rescue’s position -- out of line of sight, behind the burning grandstand on his HUD chivvying civilians. “You’re running SHIELD now. Talk to your DOD buddies. You might want to ask them about their recent contracts. And what they’re actually spending our tax dollars _on_. Or did you just decide to ignore that whole attempt on my life two days ago?”

Detroit Steel followed on his heels, missiles firing. Tony spat chaff at one, blinding it into a spiral, shot down the second and rode the shock wave higher to get a bead on the first missile and took that one out too with a quick repulsor blast. Bouncing Detroit Steel into the air pocket left afterwards was only a bonus.

“People try to kill you all the time. Hell, _I_ want to kill you,” she said. “But, damn it, Stark, why didn’t you call me?”

Tony narrowed his eyes as Johnson turned to slugs. The Vulcan on Detroit Steel’s shoulder shifted into place, spewing out a hail of lead. The Iron Man dodged it all save for a few harmless pings off his calf and ankle, skewing his flight path briefly.

“Why aren’t you doing _your_ fucking job, Hill?” Tony spat back, breath coming harder now as he twisted and dodged through the air, firing at anything that moved. “There are more than _three hundred_ of these things here. Where the hell did they launch from anyway that _you_ didn’t see them long before they got here? You’re just damn lucky they’re after _me_ and nothing else. There are two other Iron Man class heroes here on the scene. Civilians are being evacuated as we speak. It’s just property damage so far and _we’re dealing with it_. Tell WAD to stand down. What are they going to do? Carpet bomb a civilian site?”

That shut her up for a pulse-beat – he took out two more drones in that instant – and her voice when it came back was grimmer, less flip. “You know I can’t do that, Stark. WAD’s inbound in 8. Cellular activity is off the scale there too.” She recovered her sass in a hurry. Oh it was so much fun to be loathed. “So just how many of those civilians do you think are updating their Facebooks with streams of you getting your ass kicked anyway?”

“Not that many.” Cellular control? Well damn, he thought. This was going to get ugly. “Thanks for the tip, Hill. Now fuck off I’m busy.”

“Damn it, Stark!” Thankfully she didn’t try to re-connect after he shut her down and his focus snapped back to blasting drones out of the sky and dodging Detroit Steel’s attempts to get him into a wrestling hold. Johnson’s suit was clumsy and his tactics were poor. He was too used to tackling unarmored insurgents or terrorists in hacked enhancement suits. He had no experience dealing with a real opponent. He could fight this clown while sleeping, Tony thought in disgust, if it weren’t for the civilians and his people still in the area. And his repulsor car.

“Pepper! You got everyone clear yet?”

“Almost, Tony.”

“God damn it, Tony, they’re not tough but there’s a fuck-tonof them. I swear they’re homing on me too.” Rhodey sounded winded. Tony checked the telemetry from War Machine and winced. The War Machine was damaged on the left side, the armor weakened. Rhodey had to be feeling the hits now. War Machine had taken the brunt of the drone attack so far, most of the swarm seeming to avoid the area around Steel. Tony blasted another set of drones out of the sky, then leaped easily away from Detroit Steel’s return spray of fire.

The suit still displayed the initial target count dispassionately: 362 of the damn things. Rhodey had accounted for over half of them already, but the rest were still circling the track, jostling for position, apparently equipped with programming just smart enough to not to run into each other or blow each other up. Too bad. War Machine’s ammo counters were almost depleted, Tony’s HUD told him. Rhodey’d be down to repulsors alone soon.

Iron Man leaped over Steel’s grasping hands again. He caught a passing drone by the turboprop cowling and slung it around and into Steel’s face. Heard Johnson’s grunt as the thing exploded on him, doing barely any damage to Detroit Steel’s thick armor. Three more drones swirled close. Tony blasted two, then caught Johnson’s incoming punch with both hands, sinking toward the ground, boots digging furrows in the dirt. He pulsed his repulsors to drive Steel back again as the third drone exploded at their feet, sending them flying away from each other. Johnson just laughed over his speakers, a tinge of hysteria to the sound.

This was getting out of hand, Tony thought furiously. He shook off that blast only to see a swarm of nine drones incoming. Getting too far away from Steel let the drones focus on him. But far better him than grounds still clogged with people. Or Resilient. He took to the air again, straight up, and the swarm followed, others arrowing in too, turning away from other targets to pursue him. He had Steel close on his tail again as well. But Steel was nothing. He could take him. It was the drones making this hard. Too many of them. And too many bystanders in danger.

Then Pimacher shouted in his ears. He winced. Really. The comms were sensitive. They didn’t need to shout. “Boss! We think we figured it out! It’s the app. They’re controlling the drones from the web – through that cell phone game. And they’re seeing you through your repulsor signatures… they’re following your batteries!”

Pepper. Rhodey. _The car._

“We’re gonna work on shutting down cell communications. Twenty, twenty-five minutes!” Tony’s mind ticked through the numbers. Twenty minutes was too long. Too much risk.

“Tony!” Rhodey’s voice roared in his ears, yanking his attention back to the fight. He checked his HUD in time to find War Machine’s ammo counters at zero and to see a dozen drones explode at once, blasting the other suit out of the sky. War Machine hit the ground hard, another swarm of drones already diving after it.

“Jim!” Pepper screamed. Tony snarled helplessly, arcing through the sky above, Detroit Steel and his own swarm of drones still tight on his tail. “Rhodey! _Power down!_ ”

“T.. the suit’s the only thing keeping me in one piece!”

“Dammit Jim – TRUST ME!” Tony shouted, gaze fixed desperately on the signals on his HUD. Let there be enough, he thought desperately.

“Jim! No!” Pepper shouted again. Tony could see her on his HUD. Too far away. Power flickered. The drones slammed down. Dirt and concrete flew high from force of the blasts. War Machine disappeared from his display.

Then Rescue was there, energy shield extended, bouncing off the stragglers. Tony took a deep, shuddering breath as the dust cleared. War Machine was beneath the bubble. Intact. Repulsors off.

“Tony, call Hill! Get her to shut down the cells!” Pepper shouted. 

“Our mess! No Hill. No Avengers. We’ve got this,” he snapped, dodging another incoming drone that clipped Steel’s grasping hand and wobbled off to detonate behind them, scattering debris through the air. No chain of command. He knew – and Hill damn well knew too – that if that swarm had made it here undetected, someone in the DOD was giving them cover. Western Air Defense hadn’t scrambled until Hill called him – and _she’d_ called him because the news crews down below were still filming. Fucking _CNN_ had told her what was happening here. Someone’s ass was going to be in the fire for this. Well, his was right now. He blasted another drone. Watched it fall into the one beside it, the pair of them exploding harmlessly in the sky. But later on, he thought. How were they planning to spin this kind of thing on American soil? How could this discredit him? He’d survive it. An attack like this was nothing new. He was an Avenger. Shit like this was standard.

It was about his car. His new plan for the future. Him. Personally. Not as an Avenger. This was about taking out Tony Stark. Hammer didn’t care about their defense contracts anymore.

That changed things. So many things. Adrenaline surged. If they were _that_ desperate...

“It’s you, me and the car, Tony,” Pepper said, breaking into his racing thoughts – already way ahead of him because his businesses had always been more important to _her_ than the hero work –, her tone grim. “If you’re going to be a stubborn jackass… take the damn car and run. Get the hell away from here, Iron Man.”

She kept her line open deliberately. “JARVIS – if I shut down my internal repulsor functions, how long until I go into cardiac arrest?”

“Life-sustaining functionality on reserve power lasts fifteen minutes,” JARVIS announced. But Tony had already run the numbers in his own head, pulse thundering, breath gone short, battle-focus shattered. A drone exploded beside him, buffeting him, but he barely felt it.

Oh god. _Pepper_. “Pepper, don’t—!” he shouted even as the Iron Man plunged toward the ground. Toward the beta car that was somehow still unharmed, sitting where he’d dropped it at the edge of what was left of the track.

“Boys, you have fifteen minutes,” Pepper said, her voice icy cold. Determined. Rescue stood over the downed War Machine. Rhodey was already powered down. Only her suit and the car remained. Other than his own RT – the biggest and brightest of them all. While far too many drones still circled the air above them like sharks scenting blood. And Detroit Steel. “JARVIS,” she said. “Power down. And Tony?” 

Cababa’s voice sounded panicked in the background. “Oh sweet baby Jesus, Pim… she’s… go go go go _go!”_

“I’m goin’. I’m goin’. I’m goin’!” Pimacher’s frantic chant matched Tim’s, drowning out Wyche shouting something.

“Run like hell,” Pepper said.

“Repulsor shut-down commencing,” JARVIS said.

Rescue’s signature vanished from his HUD. Tony hit the ground running, heart racing in his chest, lungs aching, throat tight. Dashed for the beta car, the Iron Man peeling away so he could fit behind the wheel, re-forming into his racing gear. “Damn you, Pepper Potts! Damn it! Damn it!”

“The fuck Stark!” Wyche shouted into the comm. “Call SHIELD now! They can’t hack this in time!”

Away. He had to get the battle away. Let Pim and Cababa do their work. The drones. Steel. This was his fight. She was vulnerable now. Rhodey was vulnerable. Resilient. _Everything_. He was in the seat, belting in. His hand was on the ignition. The car was moving. He tore out of the shattered track with Detroit Steel and almost a hundred drones hard on his ass, his blood thundering in his ears.

 _Pepper_.

~*~

Johnson in the Detroit Steel suit was raging at him, but Tony drove with single-minded concentration, ignoring him. The car was perfect. Meeting every demand. Holding every turn. The car of the future. His Resilient. This was a better test run than even he could ever have imagined.

At the back of his mind the clock on Pepper’s life was running out. Fifteen minutes of back-up power. Fifteen minutes of life for another friend.

He had to get further away. Far enough away that the drones wouldn’t break off. He sped away from the test track, dodging plasma shots with the help of the Iron Man HUD dancing in his eyes.

“Stark! Keep running!” Steel’s cackle in his ears was nothing. Static.

He found back roads. Whipped around traffic as fast as he could, the drones on his tail blasting up roadway and terrain alike, Steel slewing and firing indiscriminately. The aftermath of this would be devastating for Hammer.

Farther. Farther away. He had to get far enough away. He focused on the road. Ignored Steel yelling at him, trying to taunt him, keyed a new channel clear of Steel.

“Mrs. Arbogast! Wyche! Somebody give me an update on Pepper!”

Mrs. Arbogast’s deceptively calm voice came over the line. “Macken and I are to her and Colonel Rhodes now, sir. We’re getting them out of their suits. She’s been dark for two minutes already…”

“I know! Any drones left there?” he demanded, through gritted teeth.

“I don’t think so.”

Still not far enough. He needed more miles between Pepper and the drones. More miles and more time. Maybe those two would get the cell towers shut down. Maybe they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter. He had to go. Distance. He needed distance. With the car and himself as bait.

“You can’t outrun what’s coming for you, Stark!” Johnson crowed in his ear, tearing up the world outside.

“Watch me,” he snarled back. Finding a relatively uncrowded road he slammed his foot to the floor and the car leaped ahead. He and Wyche had outdone themselves. The beta car was the one thing working perfectly in this whole fucking mess.

He dodged. Ran maps and DOT data through his HUD. Found turns to take. Emptier roads. Obstacles to put in Steel’s way. A commuter parking garage. He dodged into it. Weaved his way through the ramps and close quarters, aware of the drones exploding, circling outside, inside, waiting for him to emerge. While Steel blasted his way through the building like a rampaging bull, still hot on his tail, refusing to think, to plan ahead, just following blindly, the inexperienced fool. 

He circled back down the parking garage at as high a speed as he dared. Counting on tight corners to save him. Tires shrieking like the damned in the echoing confines. Nine minutes left for Pepper, his internal clock told him. Tony gritted his teeth and leaned out the window. Used his palm repulsor to blast away the barriers at the second level of the parking garage and drove off the ramp, flying through the air to land with a crunch on the street below.

It took Steel another precious minute to get back on his trail, though the drones found him first. He sped away. Further and further.

His comm lit up. “Stark. Hill.”

“Bit busy here, Hill,” he snarled, weaving and dodging the drone’s laser fire.

“Your nerds are trying to hack Seattle’s cell network. Get it shut it down, right? Would it kill you to ask me for help?”

“Hill, I don’t need your help. I just need distance.” Far enough away. If he could get far enough from Pepper, he would wake her up, throw on the Iron Man again and _kick Steel’s ass_.

“There is a major terror incident happening in Seattle,” Maria Hill said firmly. “I’m shutting down cellular communication in the region to cripple the enemy’s ability to coordinate.”

“Goddamn it, Hill. You’re going to look bad…” he said. Then the swarm of drones behind him dropped out of the air, tumbling and rolling across the ground, going inert as their control signals vanished.

“Fuck you, Tony. This is for Potts,” she said coldly.

Tony was already in the Iron Man in his head, oblivious to Maria Hill’s words. Already sending the signal to the distant RT. To turn it the hell back on. “Pepper. Rise and shine.”

There was a gasp over his comm. “Tony,” Pepper said, her voice strangled. Weak. But there. “Did it work?”

“Not now, Potts,” he said, slamming on the brakes. He jumped out of the car. Turned to face Detroit Steel.

He stood up straight between the car and Steel, hands loose at his sides, Iron Man contained. Smiled smugly. “Not bad for a test drive. Thanks for making me look good.”

Detroit Steel skidded to a stop a few feet away in a hail of shattered concrete and dirt, all weapons pointed his way. Tony gambled everything on Johnson’s ego.

“I can kill you ten ways to Tuesday from here, Stark,” Detroit Steel boomed.

Tony stuck his hands in his pockets. Grinned. The Iron Man pulsed in his bones. “Sure you can. But you won’t.” It was both lie and bait. The Iron Man was ready. He’d be suited up before Steel finished thinking about firing.

Detroit Steel stood frozen in front of him, weapons primed. Aimed. Silence reigned for another dozen heartbeats. Pepper’s heartbeats. He savored every one of them.

Tony’s smile grew wider as the silence dragged and he couldn’t resist pushing. He rocked on his feet insolently. “Go ahead. Ask permission. I’ll wait.”

It took a minute, but Steel’s weapons finally wound down. Lowered.

“We’re not done, Stark,” Johnson said with a snarl.

“You got that right, redneck.”

~*~

There was a SHIELD flying car sitting on his condo’s roof, Tony noted blurrily as he landed there himself in the Iron Man. It was empty, however. No driver.

He paused a moment in weary exhaustion and just stared at it. Yep. Still using that old Ferrari as a base, he noted. His mind felt too blank to focus more than that. After two days of intense work on the car. Then a running battle through Seattle’s streets. And Pepper…. Pepper stopping her own fucking heart. Trusting him. Putting her life into his hands. He still ached over that. If Hill hadn’t come through would he have gotten far enough away…?

Then having to endure another bullshit press conference with Lieutenant Johnson’s arm slung around his shoulders, fake grins making both their faces hurt as they spun the ugly truth into something that wouldn’t panic the public. Because he still couldn’t prove anything; a worm had wiped the drone controlling web-app off the internet already. At least Hammer was routed for the moment. And the car was a resounding success. Pepper was already fielding investment demands and order inquiries in droves. But all Tony wanted now was to sleep. To fall onto his bed and let unconsciousness win.

So, of course, this was the moment when Steve chose to come see him again.

He didn’t bother to retract any more of the armor than the helmet, just clumped his way down the stairwell and into his condo. His front door was unlocked. He stepped inside to find Commander Rogers sitting on his couch again. Watching him.

“Hello, Tony,” Steve said, his expression grim.

“Guess you saw all that,” Tony said, swaying slightly on his feet despite the armor he wore. He put a hand against the wall by the door to keep himself upright. Steve stood up, a deep frown drawing his brows low over those blue, blue eyes.

“Of course. It was on the news.”

Tony snorted. Let his elbow collapse slowly until his shoulder hit the wall too. He rolled his head over until his forehead thumped against wallboard. It felt cool and soothing against his skin. He looked at Steve sidelong, something that might have been self-disgust twisting his own mouth. “Hill didn’t fill you in?”

“She did,” Steve said gravely. Still standing there just staring at him, that frown on his face. “Pepper turned off her RT to fool the drones?”

Tony closed his eyes, pain eating its way through him. He’d turned it back on for her with barely less than five minutes of reserve power left. He swallowed hard.

“Yeah.”

“She’s okay now?”

“Yeah,” he said again, nodding once, his voice tight.

There was silence then. He didn’t open his eyes to see what Steve’s expression was. He couldn’t. His eyelids felt like lead. Like the lump in his stomach. And the heaviness in his throat.

“You look like hell, Tony,” Steve said. His voice low. Far too close. A shudder ran through him.

“Been busy,” he murmured, aching everywhere. But mostly behind his implant. “Making cars. Getting shot at. Almost killing my friends.”

Steve sighed. “It’s never the right time to talk to you, is it?”

His eyelids cracked open then. He could see the toes of Steve’s brown boots just at the edge of his vision. Brown, not red. Steve didn’t wear red boots anymore.

The boots moved closer. A hand landed on the armored shoulder not pressed up against the wall. He felt the simulated pressure through the armor. The ache grew stronger.

“We’ll do this later. Go get some sleep now, Tony,” Steve said, his voice a low rumble that made heat curl in the pit of Tony’s stomach. Made the longing coil and thrash in his gut. Made him sag further against the wall, head rolling down in another nod, wallboard crackling ominously under the armor’s hardness.

Somehow, he found the energy to straighten up. Steve’s hand dropped away as he moved forward, scraping the armor against the wall. His armored boots made harsh sounds on the hardwood floor, but he didn’t care. He made it to the door of his bedroom suite. Pushed it open.

Tony paused there, hands braced on the doorframe for a long, silent moment. Mind spinning, thoughts blurred. Opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“Tony. It can wait,” Steve said softly. From far too close again.

He staggered inside his bedroom without speaking, closing the door behind himself automatically. Only then did the suit peel away, vanishing into his bones as he stumbled over to the bed.

Relieved to be alone at last, he fell across the smooth blankets into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: No more direct Fraction. * whew * But Civil War #7 and Millar-asshat instead. Other lingering issues from brain-delete times. General emotional ouchies.
> 
> No pitchforks and torches please. It’s not over yet. >_>;
> 
> \---------------------------------------------------

Tony woke to the black-out shaded darkness of his bedroom, the muffled thumps of a heavy-engine helicopter’s rotors passing overhead just fading from his hearing. An HH-65C Coast Guard chopper, he identified hazily from the sounds. Flying some poor soul to the Regional Trauma Center at Harborview, he guessed. That was the only reason they would cut across the city like that. Normal flight paths avoided the downtown Seattle core.

He blinked up at the shadowed ceiling of his room, weighing his own physical status carefully. No longer on the ragged edge, but if left alone he could probably sleep a few more hours, he thought. He turned his head to the side, toward the windows, but the shades were too good. He couldn’t see any hint of light around them. He deliberately didn’t access the Iron Man to check the time. Or the date. Not yet. He shifted a hand out from under the blankets to scrub at his face and the light of the RT spilled out, brightening the room. He closed his eyes again to avoid it.

Stubble rasped against his fingertips, his palm. His goatee felt blurred on the edges. He really needed to trim it. And shave. He let his hand fall back to his chest. He was mostly naked, of course, wearing only a pair of trunks. He’d absorbed the Iron Man completely earlier, he remembered vaguely. But hadn’t he been on top of the bed? Lying across it? Normally he didn’t move much in his sleep – Rumiko had always teased him about being a control freak even while unconscious – but he was lying on the bed normally now, under the sheet and cover, pillows bunched beneath his head and shoulders.

Tony sighed and rolled onto his side, mildly annoyed by the dull ache of morning wood trapped at an awkward angle inside his trunks. He reached down and shifted it, stroking himself only once before his hand froze as he remembered his visitor of last night. 

Steve had come back to try to talk to him again.

He grimaced into the RT-lit room, eyes open now. Flexed his hand around his cock through the thin, slick fabric. Then deliberately slipped his hand under the band and began to jerk off. Not thinking about Steve waiting for him again. About Steve’s hand on his shoulder. The sound of his familiar voice pitched low. Not thinking at all, no, just feeling the rough slide of skin over heated skin. The surge of blood making him harder, longer. The slickness starting from the end. He wasn’t gentle. Just jerked himself ruthlessly to a quick, messy finish, biting his lip to hold back a low groan as his hips flexed, his abs tensed and semen splattered over his still-moving fingers and stomach.

“Damn it,” he said out loud after rolling onto his back to ride out the aftershocks, his breath hitching in his throat almost like a sob. 

He threw off the blankets sharply, twisting to get his feet on the floor. Swayed a moment when he stood up, lightheaded, and then stalked across the plush carpeted floor into the bathroom.

He flipped all the lights on, uncaring of the glare off glass and tile. At least it blinded him enough so he didn’t have to see himself in the mirror. He stepped straight into the shower, stripping off his sticky trunks and kicking them aside.

He set the shower controls to 41 degrees C and fumbled with the shower gel until he had enough in his palm to foam up. Then he scrubbed his hand and abs and cock clean, trying very hard not to remember how he’d imagined Steve’s mouth on him as he came.

~*~

Tony strolled out into the main part of his condo half an hour later more than ready for coffee. He was shaved, trimmed, scrubbed and dressed in real clothes for once. The linen and silk-blends felt good against his skin. He’d almost forgotten that simple pleasure after weeks of wearing whatever he could be bothered to form out of the Iron Man interface. Long bands of sunlight streamed in the western-facing windows setting the room aglow, the thick wash of light muted somewhat by the polarized glass. It was late in the day then. Probably not Monday, he thought to himself wryly, given how good he felt, but hopefully not Wednesday. He needed to be in New York on Wednesday. Then he came to an abrupt halt half way to the kitchen, heart jumping in his chest as he stared wide-eyed across the wide open room.

“Steve,” he breathed, shocked. Commander Rogers looked up from where he was seated at the dining room table, papers spread out around him, a pad of legal paper under one hand and a PDA near the other.

“Good evening, Tony,” Steve said quietly, a calm look on his face as he set his pen down. Just as if this were Avengers Tower two years ago and not Tony’s private penthouse in Seattle thousands of miles away and now.

“Evening,” he repeated numbly, a touch of guilty panic lurking beneath the shock. It really wasn’t fair. He had no coffee in his system yet. Though he could smell some somewhere, already brewed. His stomach rumbled impatiently and his hand twitched but his feet didn’t move. “Is it Wednesday?” he asked warily. Steve glanced over his shoulder out the windows toward the reddened sun hovering just atop the mountains in the distance, then back, a distinct quirk to his lips as he shook his head. “No. Tuesday.”

Tony forced himself into motion. Moved into the kitchen and found himself a mug. One benefit being it put his back to Steve for a few moments. He poured coffee into it with hands that shook slightly and took a deep drink, shamelessly using the Iron Man to leech enough heat out of it to prevent searing his flesh. He needed the caffeine. Now. He paused for breath only after half the mug was empty. Stared down into it blankly.

He licked his lips. Fresh-brewed. Probably started when his shower had come on. Part of him blanched. That meant Steve had been here when he…

His desperate thoughts latched onto the sound of a chair being pushed back. The soft thumps of bare feet against the floor approaching him.

He was awake. Rested. Getting caffeinated. He wasn’t fed, but that hardly mattered as his stomach was roiling enough now with just coffee in it. Still, he could have predicted the next words out of Steve’s mouth even if he hadn’t been asleep for nearly 24-hours.

“You should eat something too,” Steve said quietly from somewhere far too close behind him. Tony closed his eyes. Fought back a shudder. He lifted the mug and drained it, sucking in a deep breath afterwards.

“You stayed?” Tony managed, setting the mug down beside the coffee machine. Stared at it in mild disgust. Well, wasn’t he master of the obvious this morning. Evening. Whatever.

At the edge of his vision he saw Steve come to a stop and lean a hip against the counter. He had one hand braced on the countertop. The other hung at his side. He wasn’t wearing his entire uniform, Tony noted. Just the red-strip pants and a plain white tee shirt. Tony’s breath went short, his pulse thumping at his pulse-points. The things Steve’s chest did to plain white tee shirts should really be considered illegal. He forced the slightly giddy thought down firmly as Steve nodded. “In the guest room.”

If he’d known that he certainly wouldn’t have jerked off earlier. Wouldn’t have let his thoughts drift so far into forbidden territory. Tony shivered as awareness and guilt and a growing sense of doom fought for dominance inside him. He could feel Steve’s closeness, prickling in the nerves down the nearer side of his body. The Iron Man started to react, to slip out onto his skin. He forced it back into standby again before it could stretch his clothes.

“Tony,” Steve said, his voice low, pitched in that way that went straight to his groin. And why oh why couldn’t he stop thinking things like that? “We need to talk.” Tony risked turning his head toward him. Was caught by Steve’s steady gaze for a searing moment before his own slid frantically away. But oh god not the chest. He couldn’t look there. He fixed his gaze on Steve’s hand on the counter instead. Watched it fist there for a moment, then relax.

“Do we?” he said, licking lips that were suddenly dry. Steve’s hands were big. Strong. Competent. Not safe to look at either. His imagination was far too active and vivid at the moment. “I thought too much got said already.”

“It did and it didn’t. Tony,” Steve said softly. “Look at you. You can’t even look me in the eye anymore.”

Tony closed his eyes. Tipped his head back. Laughed darkly. “I haven’t been able to do that since you turned my brain back on.”

“No, we understood each other after stopping Hela’s power-play for the Nine Realms, even if things weren’t easy. This is just since Antonia,” Steve countered fiercely. “Since she forced you to admit you’ve always been in love with me.”

The air left his chest as if he’d been punched in the diaphragm. He gasped for breath for a moment, still staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of his kitchen. The halogen can lights were much too bright. His eyes began to prickle and helpless anger rose inside of him.

“Would you rather she was back here to say it to you instead, Steve?” he snapped, aching. “Me, only with the right body parts. A body you might actually _want_.” And he’d never been so bitterly aware that not everyone in the world was as sexually open as he was as right then.

He’d forgotten how fast Steve could move. In an instant there were hands on his shoulders, turning him, giving him a small shake. “Tony, don’t!” Steve’s expression was grim, tight. “I don’t know her. She may be _like_ you, but she isn’t _you_.”

He twisted against Steve’s grip. Couldn’t pull free. Refused to lift his hands to push. He couldn’t touch… couldn’t let himself. Had to get distance. But he couldn’t drop his gaze. Stared deep into fierce azure eyes. Pain surged. Guilt. Self-loathing. “She didn’t get you killed.”

“You didn’t either!” Steve snapped, his glare savage. “That was the Skull. He saw an opening and he took it. That’s all.”

“No! He got into SHIELD _on my watch, and I don’t even know how_. I don’t remember how… and damn it, how can you… he got to Sharon! Your woman! Because of me! So that means you wouldn’t have died if I hadn’t failed, Steve. _You wouldn’t have been there for his plan to work, god damn it!_ ”

Steve’s glare was fierce, his face grim. “You’re right. You don’t remember. _I surrendered_ , Tony. I surrendered to the United States Government – not to _you_ – because I had put my _pride_ above the safety of the people of America. _I put myself on those steps, Tony_. I put myself there because in my zeal to defend my _ideals_ I realized I had nearly become the exact thing I’d sworn I’d never become.” He was sucking in hard breaths, holding Tony’s gaze fast, his eyes gleaming with tears. “ _I almost killed you, Tony!_ ” he shouted, his hands gripping Tony’s shoulders like iron. A sob broke out of his chest and Tony could only stare at him. Horrified. Struck dumb.

He was talking about that moment. The pictures of that last battle. The firemen. The EMTs. Swarming over Captain America. Holding him back. The pictures of himself lying on the ground in battered armor, blood on his bruised face. The pictures of Steve, kneeling, slumped and defeated, his hands limp at his sides, his expression anguished. Tony didn’t remember that moment. _Couldn’t_ remember it anymore. It was gone. Gone from his memories. But he’d seen those frozen images behind his eyelids in a thousand nightmares since Broxton. Seen them and ached and ached for the horror and devastation captured in Steve’s eyes. The horror he was seeing now. Again. The horror he’d forgotten when he wiped his own mind.

“God forgive me,” Steve whispered, his head tipping forward, tears slipping freely down his cheeks now. “I’d beaten you. You were down. _And I still would have killed you._ They stopped me. They stopped me. Oh thank God they stopped me.”

Then Steve’s arms were around him, crushing him to his chest and nothing on Earth could stop Tony from closing his own around him in return.

“I’d gladly take those bullets again, Tony. I’d die a thousand times over. As long as it meant I didn’t kill you,” he said into his shoulder. And then Steve was lifting his head, wet cheek sliding against Tony’s fresh-shaved one. And then Steve’s mouth was on his, hot and slick and desperate.

Steve was kissing him. Tony’s mind blanked. The argument. The revelation that Steve had surrendered to end the war _just_ _because of him_. Everything faded away. Steve was touching him willingly. Eagerly. His hands clutching frantically at Tony’s back, around his body. Pressing him close. All lips and tongue and the eager suck of breath.

He tasted like heaven. Like everything he’d ever imagined and better. Like Steve.

But he could taste the salt of his tears too. Feel the studdering heave of Steve’s chest with each lingering sob of a breath. He was grief-stricken. Guilt-stricken. Lost in memory. Memory Tony no longer shared. Tony pulled his mouth away from Steve’s with effort. Pressed his lips to Steve’s hot cheeks instead. To his wet eyes. Murmured to him softly, his hands in Steve’s hair, rubbing, stroking, soothing.

“I’m here. I’m alive. Steve. You didn’t. You didn’t do it.”

“Please God, Tony,” Steve breathed, his words damp with sorrow, his arms still tight around him, their legs tangled. “It seems so long ago… and like yesterday. You taunted me… made me so angry…”

“Shhh,” Tony said, pressing their foreheads together, his hands cupping Steve’s flushed face. “It’s past. You didn’t.”

He’d been told, by Pepper, by Hill, by Carol, that all during the fighting he’d made attempts to talk to Steve. And Steve had met with him each time. Alone. Just the two of them. But he’d lost those memories too. Lost the twists and turns of the discussions they’d had. The obvious arguments. The missed opportunities to stop the spiral into destruction they’d been trapped on together. Lost the chain of decisions – bad, worse, terrible – that had lead him to the point where he’d been on that street, helpless at Steve’s feet, finding only his own death in the eyes of the man he’d loved with his whole heart since the first day they met.

And taunting him to finish it. Finish him. He could see himself doing that, faced with the inescapable proof of Steve’s hatred. _He could see it._ Taste it, like ashes on his tongue.

And he hated himself for ever letting it get that far. For doing that to Steve.

No wonder he’d been so craven and wiped those memories out, Tony thought angrily, shuddering with fresh grief of his own. He only wished he could somehow spare Steve them too.

Steve’s eyes were closed. His lashes clumped by tears. But he was silent at last, his breathing eased. The hands on Tony’s back were steady again. Tony stared at him, longing and pain thick in his throat. He loved him. Still. With an ache and a strength that would never fade.

“We both made mistakes, Tony,” Steve said softly. And it was the understatement of the century, but Tony couldn’t really argue that he’d made far more. He couldn’t remember all of his. As Antonia had accused, he admitted to himself now that he probably _did_ have a backup of that lost year hidden somewhere. He’d surely hated himself enough to save one. “But you need to be open with me now. Tell me what you need…”

“No.” The word came out before he could stop it. Defensive. Automatic. He’d driven Steve that far once. Not again. He couldn’t bear to see hatred in his eyes again. And Steve would hate him for needing him to be something he wasn’t. The blue eyes snapped open. Captured his gaze firmly. Tony tried to draw back. Failed. But Steve’s arms were a cage now. Panic surged. The Iron Man stirred instantly in response.

“ _Tony_.” The suit began to flow out onto his skin. To push Steve’s touch away amid the sounds of tearing cloth. “Tony stop!”

The HUD snapped into place in front of his eyes. Clearly showing him the anger in Steve’s face. The frustration. Hard hands tightened on his shoulders, gripping with punishing force now that metal and composite lay between them.

“You’re running again,” he said through gritted teeth, while Tony gasped for breath behind the safety of his helmet.

“Steve,” he said. Then stumbled into silence. No words coming. He had no excuse. Steve was right. But he stayed in the armor. Stood frozen in the middle of the kitchen.

“Damn it, Tony,” Steve snapped, shoving away from him to pace around the room, circling the island like a caged tiger, his hands flexing into and out of fists at his sides. Furious. Frustrated.

And because he was behind the helmet, behind the armor, he could finally say what he had to. No matter how the words seared his throat. “You’re not gay, you’re not bi, you’re straight. And _I know this_ Steve. I’ve always known it. This is my problem, not yours. It’s not even new. We’ve been friends for years without it being a problem. Things are a little rocky for me right now, yeah, but I’ll deal with it my own way… get it under control soon… but… please… god, Steve... don’t try to _pretend_ for my sake. I… I couldn’t bear that.”

Steve whirled around to glare at him. “Why do you always jump to the worst conclusions?”

His heart thudded sickly in his chest. His ears buzzed faintly. “Because it’s the truth?”

“Your truth! Because you’ve decided you have to be right,” Steve spat, back rigid, eyes narrowed. “Because your version of things is the only version. You didn’t give me any _time_ , Tony. Time to think about any of it. What it meant. You just jumped to conclusions. When did you stop _listening_ to your friends, Tony? When did you decide only your view was ever the right one? Well, I’ve got news for you, mister, _you’re not always right!_ ”

Steve was in his face again with the last shout. Hands on his arms again. Gripping him with punishing force that the armor measured and countered automatically. Tony swallowed hard, his eyes burning as Steve glared at him furiously.

“Take off the armor, Tony,” he demanded.

His chest ached. His breath shuddered in his own throat.

“Why?” he responded automatically, the word strangled. Steve’s glare bored into his eyes. Even through the HUD.

“Because I want to kiss you again, Tony.”

His stomach plummeted, his pulse went wild. Again? What did he mean. While in the grip of strong emotion he could understand it. Handle it. Barely. But this… this deliberate intent. He staggered on his feet in shock, but Steve’s implacable grip on his arms held him in place. He could only stare into Steve’s eyes. Fierce. Demanding.

“This isn’t a game, Steve.”

“I’m not playing a game. Not at all. I’ve never been more serious. I want to kiss you, Tony.”

Sheer terror seized him. Terror because the first thing he’d felt at those words was hope. “But you’re not…”

“Don’t tell me what I’m not!” Steve bellowed in his face. “Tony Stark does not have the corner on the entire spectrum of human sexuality! For God’s sake, Tony, stop denying yourself. Stop denying me. I had no idea you were bisexual or that you were interested in me that way. _You wouldn’t let me know._ And damn you for that, Tony. Damn you for not trusting me enough to make my own decisions about this.”

“Don’t,” he managed to say, his voice a thread. “You can break me this way, Steve. Right to the core. _You_ can. Don’t do this.”

Steve’s hands shifted up. Cupped the helmet as if it were Tony’s face, but he couldn’t feel it because the helmet didn’t give feedback the way the rest of the suit did. The eyes that looked into his own softened some but still somehow lost none of their fierceness.

“I don’t want to break you, Tony. Ever. Trust me.”

Paralyzed by his own desire, his own longing, so suddenly, impossibly offered to him, Tony just breathed inside his armor. Gaze trapped. Heartbeats counted without record. Until Steve sighed, his gaze fading into sadness again. Into disappointment. Tony ached, gasping now, his own breaths deafening as they echoed in his own ears inside the helmet.

“Tony, I know you trust me in one way. You gave me the shut-down code for your armor again. But I also know that light in your chest is… part of you now. It keeps you alive. And it’s part of your armor too. _How much does it shut down?_ ”

This was realer. Possible. Something he’d already done. Something he’d chosen to do back in those first blackest days when he’d re-learned the consequences of what he’d chosen to forget. But wrongly. Again. He’d been so wrong. He swallowed hard. Forced out the words that he knew Steve wouldn’t want to hear. Because he had to. He owed him the truth. Because Steve deserved to understand what he might be forced to do someday. “All of it. Me. All of me.”

Steve closed his eyes for a moment. Shuddered. “Damn it, Tony. Don’t you ever do anything that isn’t utterly reckless?”

“You should know the answer to that by now,” he said, his own voice shaking.

Steve’s expression was weary, hurt. But not surprised. He’d known, Tony realized. He’d known Tony had handed him the power to kill him. Again. Guilt made his guts churn. “Give me a second code. One that only gets the armor.”

“I will.” Tony promised quietly, trembling inside his armor. And he would. He would give Steve Rogers the choice to take his power or his life. He owed him that. Now more than ever. One less black mark. One less mistake.

“Take off the armor.” The request was softer this time. Faint. As if from behind a closing door. And this time, before he could think it through, the armor was melting away, forming into copies of the clothes that were lying shredded on the floor. As open air struck his face he realized his cheeks were damp. Steve was looking at him steadily, something like relief in his eyes. “Thank you,” Steve said, his hands curling gently around Tony’s upper arms.

Then he leaned closer, his head tipped to the side. Angled. Ready. His breath washed across Tony’s mouth. His eyelids flickered lower, but didn’t close. Tony could see the intent glitter of them behind salt-spiked lashes.

“May I kiss you?” he asked quietly and Tony’s heart ached with fear. With impossible hope. With crushing doubt. Then he swallowed it all and made the reckless choice. The kind he was famous for.

“Ye—,” he began but Steve’s lips were on his before he could finish the ‘s’, opening his mouth wider, firm tongue licking deep. Forceful and sure. No hesitation at all. Tony’s mind spun, his hands pawing at, then gripping the sides of Steve’s tee shirt for stability. Lost in the longing, the need, the sheer unbelievable wonder of Steve _wanting_ to kiss him.

Hands slid back until hard arms closed around him. Held him tight. They were nearly the same height. He didn’t have to bend his head at all either, just tilted it. And he wasn’t a small man by any means, but Steve, as always, made him feel that way. When they were sparring. In the field. But especially like this. Now. When he’d finally handed him his heart.

Tony met the tongue in his mouth with his own. Dueled it. Sucked on it. Used every ounce of his skill to stroke and tease and savor. To make it good. Until Steve groaned. Slid a hand up Tony’s back into his hair. Gripped the back of his head. Held him still and just devoured him until Tony was dizzy with the breathless power of it. The heady relief. No rejection. No disgust. Just open, willing response. 

Steve finally pulled away from his mouth, slowly, nipping at his lips as he went while Tony was left gasping for breath, sucking air into lungs already shorted by his own near-hyperventilation in the suit. Now Steve had stolen the last of his reserves. And he was fine with that. Oh yes. Completely fine. He didn’t need air right now, he had Steve, he thought with a tinge of hysteria.

“Tony,” Steve said, his voice low, husky in a way Tony had never heard before. His gaze was steady. Intent. While Tony concentrated on filling his lungs. Until his head was slightly less dizzy. “I’m afraid I’m not very good at this kind of thing. You’re the one who has all this experience…”

He winced, euphoria fading some, his grip on Steve’s shirt loosening. “Yeah. I’m a slut. You can say that.” Woman after woman after woman… and back before Steve, men by the droves too. His hands fell to Steve’s waist. Then away. There was sometimes oblivion in sex. Temporary, but there. It had been a better choice than the bottle. Maybe.

Steve frowned, his hands flexing against Tony’s back. “No, that’s not what I meant at all, Tony. You have to stop jumping to conclusions.”

He let out a shuddering breath. Tried to rein in his racing thoughts. Failed. But shut his mouth on the string of explanations, of excuses that wanted to spill out. That much he could manage. For the moment. “Okay.”

Steve looked unconvinced, but continued. “You know I haven’t been with many… people… over the years.”

 _People_. Tony wanted to laugh bitterly at his careful choice of word but didn’t. No. He meant women. He’d hardly been with any women at all. And Tony looked into his memories deliberately. Counted. And came up with barely a handful of names linked to Steve’s. Mostly Sharon Carter. On and off again. And he’d always wondered why – how Sharon could let Steve go, over and over again, come back, but never stay – but had never dared ask.

“You’re still sleeping with Sharon,” he said hollowly. And guilt surged. Made him feel ill. He tried to pull back, pushing against his waist, but the heavy arms wouldn’t shift. Steve frowned, let out an irritated huff of breath.

“No. Stop. Tony… We’re not together like that right now. She’s tired of… never mind.” And Steve’s frown grew deeper, but it was more uncomfortable than angry. “You know how I feel about discussing private matters with others, Tony.”

“Okay, yeah,” he said reluctantly. Steve never had bragged. Never spoken of any woman he might have been sleeping with in more than a respectful fashion. Hell, he’d barely admitted having relationships even when he was. It was nothing new. He shouldn’t feel this sinking sensation at all. It was just Steve’s way. He’d been raised in a far different time, for all that he had always been surprisingly accepting of others here in his future. In his personal life he’d always appeared to be a man of his time, gracious and reticent. It was one reason Tony had made the choice he had, all those years ago. When he first fell in love with him.

“I’m just saying this is new to me,” Steve said quietly, his gaze steady. “It’s new but not… unwelcome.”

Then he leaned forward and kissed him again. Softly. Tenderly. And Tony fell into it. His mouth opening, receptive. Eyes falling shut. Body shaking faintly with reaction. He let Steve control the embrace entirely this time. Let his mouth shape his own how he wanted. Gently. Carefully. Exploring him as if he were fragile. And so many conflicting thoughts, sensations, feelings spun through him then that he could only grip Steve’s sides and hold on, feeling as if he were shattering apart. Breaking. Longing swelled. Overwhelmed him. But still he let Steve control the embrace. Took only what he was willing to give.

Finally one of Steve’s hands rose to Tony’s neck, a thumb brushing under his jaw before he pulled back to whisper, “Not unwelcome at all, Tony.

Tony’s chest ached. His throat had gone tight again. “I want you so much,” he whispered, shuddering, a sob in his voice. “ _Please_.”

Steve leaned forward. Pressed their foreheads together again. His hands were gentle on Tony’s body. Too gentle. “I don’t think that’s a good idea yet,” he said softly. “There are things we need to discuss first.”

Tony closed his eyes. Swallowed hard. Fought the doubt. The fear. Both of them clawing at him even more viciously than the longing and the need. “Yeah, p-probably not. I just… had to say it.”

“I know,” Steve said. “It’s okay.”

They stood like that for a few minutes. Steve’s breath warm and easy against his face, arms around him gentle. Tony’s heart rate shifting, surging as he fought himself. Fought his body. Fought his inevitable response. They weren’t smashed together, Steve held him easily, but wasn’t pressing them close. Tony had his own arms around Steve’s waist, but his hands were pressed flat against his back to keep from grabbing, stroking, pulling closer. His hips still jerked from time to time. Quivered with the effort of restraint. His erection like iron. It was too much. To have him there. In his arms. Finally. And not…

“Tony,” Steve said as he shifted uncomfortably once more, and he broke then. Grabbed Steve’s arms and pushed away. Getting only as far as the length of Steve’s arms, his hands on his shoulders and glared back at him.

“Give me some damn space! If you’re not going to fuck me, _give me some damn space!_ ”

“No,” Steve said, meeting his glare with one of his own. “I’m not letting you run again.” Then he picked him up, slinging him over his shoulder like a bag of concrete, a hard arm pinning his thighs, the other heavy in the middle of his back to keep him down and he was striding toward Tony’s bedroom. Tony braced his hands against Steve’s back, trying to arch up in outrage and failing against that heavy hand.

“The fuck! Steve!” he snarled. But didn’t kick. Didn’t twist away or convert the Iron Man into armor. Let himself be carried into the other room in a state close to disbelief. Let Steve kick the door shut behind them. Let himself be carried to his bed.

And then was thrown onto it, Steve following him down in a rush, covering him with his broad body. Pinning his hands over his head with a grip like manacles. Like any one of the thousands of times they’d sparred through the years, and yet not. And every filthy fantasy he’d whacked off to after a spar later came to him in a rush, overwhelming him for a moment so much that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, could only feel Steve’s longed-for weight crushing him into the mattress. And there was no way to hide his erection now, pressed firmly against Steve’s thigh. No way to disguise his blatant arousal. No way to disguise exactly what he wanted from Steve.

“Fast, you live too fast, Tony,” Steve said through gritted teeth. “Slow down.”

“Bringing me in here wasn’t a brilliant plan if you expected me to slow down!” Tony snapped back, need making him light-headed. It took him only an instant more of struggle to discover Steve wasn’t hard at all. Self-loathing slammed into him then. Steve _didn’t_ want this. He _was_ pretending. Despair loomed.

“I knew this wouldn’t work. Get out!”  He bucked sharply, but Steve didn’t move. Tony tugged uselessly at his trapped wrists, hissing out an angry breath, mortification making his face burn.

“Why is sex the only thing you’ll believe? Damn it, Tony. Fine,” Steve said, then shook his head sharply, and deliberately rocked forward on his thigh, squeezing Tony’s cock, making him gasp, groan, throw his head to the side in involuntary response. Steve was still talking to him. Speaking into his hair, near his ear. Words that Tony could barely hear over the surging roar of his own blood. Over the longing released. His heart seeming to swell behind the RT until he felt choked by it. By what he wanted. From Steve. Everything. At last.

“There are things about the Serum… about what it did to me… that you don’t understand, Tony. And I don’t… I don’t want to hurt you. And I could. Especially because I’m… I’m not sure what I can do with you yet.”

“Anything. Please. And I don’t mind. I like it rough too,” Tony said, through a mouth that felt dry, with a voice that sounded like begging even to his own ears, rubbing himself up shamelessly into the weight of Steve’s thigh. It was almost enough. Almost. “Please.”

“I don’t. But that’s not really what I mean,” Steve said hoarsely, shifting his own mouth against Tony’s neck. A tongue lapped at his skin. As if exploring. Testing. He felt him take a deep breath. Lips pressed to the damp spot. Sucked softly. With intent. Until Tony gasped. Rocked up. Hands flexed around his wrists. Gentling. But still implacable. Steve’s mouth finally released him. Lips moving against his skin. His voice muffled against Tony’s throat. “It’s about endurance. It takes me… a very long time. Just… oh my God, Tony, I don’t want to hurt you. Not this way. Not any way. Ever.”

Tony tried to control himself. To rein his response back. Because Steve seemed upset by what he was telling him, but Tony could barely absorb it. Couldn’t parse what it might mean yet.

“I wasn’t just being crass earlier. I’m a damned slut, Steve. Sex is my thing. Sex and death.” He laughed breathlessly, bitterly to find himself quoting Sasha Hammer to Steve in bed. Sucked in a sobbing breath. Forced himself to go slack. Let his head roll away. “And it’s clearly not your thing with me. So this won’t work. I can’t do this to you…”

Steve reared back and smothered his words with his mouth. Driving his tongue deep. Filling Tony’s mouth until all he could do was arch up and take it, breath short, mind spinning again, body surging.

He broke away finally. Spoke against Tony’s lips, his eyes heavy-lidded, his face flushed. “I like kissing. I like being with someone in bed, touching… but I… for me… just… come, Tony, c’mon. Get it out of the way. Then we can talk. C’mon, rub off on me. I know you need to.”

Tony frowned. Struggled to get his breath back. There was so much there he didn’t understand. Couldn’t wrap his brain around. Not just yet.

“Get naked,” Steve whispered to him now, that blue gaze so intent. Focused. “Let me feel you do it.”

Steve shifted his hips, moving his thigh away from Tony, lifting his knee to free him to rock up against him with larger motions. And then he couldn’t resist doing what he’d wanted to all along. Simulated clothes vanished back into his skin in moments. Leaving him in his trunks alone. Skin hugging and thin, they did little to conceal his erection, to restrict it, the head of his cock already poking beyond the waistband, leaking slickness everywhere.

“There you go,” Steve said softly, the words low, rich, like praise. And he shifted his grip on Tony’s wrists so only one hand was holding them together. Broad and strong and impossible to escape. The other he slid down Tony’s body slowly, but without hesitation; over throat, naked chest, pausing a moment at the RT to feel the warmth of it, then gliding down over Tony’s shivering belly to the line of elastic around his hips. Tony hissed in a breath as rough fingertips brushed the head of his cock. Cried out as Steve’s hand closed around him, laid atop him.

“Steve,” Tony said, his own voice low, wrecked. He panted and turned his head enough to look at Steve’s face. Saw that he was looking down at where his own hand held Tony’s cock cradled, strong fingers curling gently around it now. Then he looked back up too, blue, blue eyes heavy-lidded, lips wet from the tip of his tongue. Tony groaned deep. Made helpless at the sight. Rocked his hips up into Steve’s palm, hard. And came then, in a blinding, surging rush. Hot white lines slipping between Steve’s fingers in pulses to paint his own belly, the hiss of Steve’s breath loud in his ears, the surge of Steve’s mouth over his as he cried out, stifling it, swallowing it, absorbing it.

Tongue and breath and lips tangled. His heart racing. Pulse frantic. Hips frozen, stuttering. His mind blanked on release, aching, blinded, thoughtless, for once, everything in him concentrated on Steve’s touch, Steve’s mouth, Steve’s body lying over his. Surging up and out of him in an endless stream until everything and nothing was left. 

His hands were released. There were soft touches. Movement. But nothing urgent. Nothing demanding enough to draw his full attention. Tony became fully aware again slowly, after who knew how many moments lost. The haze of sated limbo faded into the fresh puff of warm breath in his hair, the deliberate brush of lips against his temple. He was turned onto a broad, now bare chest, his body rolled back against Steve’s. Heavy arms surrounded him. Cradled him.

“Ungh,” he managed. Steve shifted beneath him in a soft chuckle. The lips at his forehead moved into what was probably a smile.

“Back now?”

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely, skimming a hand along that wide expanse of chest, down those taut, perfect abs, only to have it caught in a firm grip before he could reach further than his belt.

“That’s not necessary,” Steve said quietly, lifting Tony’s hand back up to his chest. To his mouth. Brushed Tony’s curled fingers against his barely parted lips, warm and smooth.

“I’m not that much of a selfish ass,” Tony managed, his voice hoarse, feeling peevish and guilty, despite the clear affection in the gesture.

Steve sighed.  “You aren’t being selfish, it’s just… not necessary,” he said quietly. “That’s what we need to talk about, Tony.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Mentions of events of New Avengers 1-6, with timing liberties taken; Luke Cage gets the first shot at the Heroic Age. 
> 
> Happy Birthday, Cap!
> 
>  
> 
> \-------------------------------------

“I don’t have sex,” Steve Rogers said against Tony’s hand. The one still held to his mouth. His breath was warm, soothing, his heartbeat steady, the broad chest warm beneath him as Tony lifted his own head and stared at him in dismay.

“You what?”

A wry smile curved Steve’s mouth, his other arm shifting closer around Tony, holding him tight as Tony tried to pull away, stung, confused.

“No, don’t move,” he ordered, holding on tighter until Tony stilled, subsided uneasily. He shook his head minutely before he relaxed his grip and went on. “It’s not really a priority for me.”

Tony was having a hard time wrapping his thoughts around the statement in a calm way. He swallowed hard. Tried to still his suddenly frantic pulse. The flash of panic.

“Then what was that then? _Pity?_ ”  He flailed a little against Steve’s hold again, though it was useless. He’d let him pin him down. Welcomed his embrace and now Steve had leverage and position and he wasn’t going to relinquish it.

“No, Tony, of course not. I _wanted_ to do that for you,” Steve said, rolling closer, leaning over him completely. It both caged Tony against the bed and put Steve’s intent expression right above him, his eyes flicking back and forth between Tony’s reading his reaction. “I hadn’t realized how good you would look that way either,” he added then, his voice dropping back down into that low, intimate register again. The one that did unholy things to Tony’s willpower and libido. Even as exhausted as it was now. “You looked very good when you came, Tony.”

And then Steve was kissing him again. Firm and deep. And Tony could only go with it, his mind spinning with confusion, a hand shifting up to clutch desperately at the back of Steve’s neck.

When he finally pulled back, Tony was relaxed again, his breath coming short, his eyelids heavy. Steve seemed to have no problem kissing him stupid at least, he thought in a daze. It was alarmingly effective. He might even have to start worrying about that aspect of things. Later.

Steve sighed. Brushed a fingertip over Tony’s softened lips. “I’m not very good at explaining this, I’m afraid. I haven’t done it very often, so please, Tony, just rein your impatient brain in for a few more minutes and let me _try_? Okay?”

“I’ll try. Yeah. Okay,” he said a little breathlessly, and hoped he could. It was easier with Steve holding on to him like this. It was hard to deny him anything with his body pressed up against Tony’s, his face so close, his mouth blurred from Tony’s.

Steve frowned at him slightly but seemed mollified enough by his words to continue. “It’s a choice I made,” he said quietly. “It’s not that I can’t get it up, or get off, it’s that, with the Serum, I just have too much stamina.” He blushed slightly as Tony gaped at him, then grimaced. “It takes… quite a bit of effort for me to finish. More effort than, well, most _unmodified_ people can manage.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad…” Tony began, relief in his tone and Steve shook his head at him again, a stern look in his eyes.

“You said you’d try to hear me out, Tony. So, shh.”

“Okay, okay,” he said, suddenly feeling less relieved and more bemused again.

“I completely outlast my partner. To the point of exhaustion. Tony, don’t smile. It really isn’t like you’re thinking. Honestly,” he said and frowned, stared down at Tony’s mouth for a moment until his tentative amusement faded into uncertainty. “It can be a… strain to be fully intimate with someone, fully aroused, and yet not be able to orgasm… well, pretty much ever. Unless I’m already exhausted from battle or training.”

His mind worked on the information, considering it like an engineering problem, of sorts. And, no, perfect endurance probably wasn’t as great as his initial sophomoric reaction might have painted it. Because he’d seen Steve fight for _days_ straight without much rest. And in that context, the concept suddenly really wasn’t nearly as amusing as on first hearing.

Steve was a gentleman. Considerate. Chivalrous. And he seemed to view this aspect of his unique physiology as a gross imposition on his partner. It didn’t help that Steve was stubborn too. God knew Tony knew that. So somehow, sometime if he’d decided his needs were less important than his partner’s comfort or health – then Mephisto himself wouldn’t budge him on the point.

Ah, Sharon, Tony thought suddenly, mentally wincing. No wonder she’d left him every now and then. Steve was probably lucky she hadn’t tried to brain him on her way out the door one of those times. She might just have, knowing Agent 13’s temper.

“So it’s just your choice not to? Nothing medical,” he had to ask.

“No, nothing’s wrong. Well it maybe takes me a little bit longer to get aroused is all. But I’m fully capable,” he answered ruefully. “ _Too_ capable.”

Tony winced, taken aback some by the hint of weary resignation in his tone. “You jerk off in the shower at least. Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“Sometimes. When I have an hour to spare. Honestly, Tony, it’s just the Serum.” Steve sighed, his eyes rolling slightly, a brief smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. But the moment of amusement faded far too quickly.

Steve leaned in closer, serious again. Ran his fingers into Tony’s hair, cupping the side of his head, a heavy thumb rubbing along the line of Tony’s cheekbone, his voice soft.

“I just need you to understand – if you still want to give this a try even knowing this – that I won’t be… penetrating you, Tony. And why. The _real_ reason why. And it’s not because you think I find your preferences abhorrent, but because I don’t do it at all.”

“Is this okay with you?” Steve asked quietly after several heartbeats of silence, watching him. And, really, Tony didn’t know how he felt about the information yet, couldn’t feel much past the sensation of Steve lying relaxed against him, touching him tenderly like this. It was too fragile. Too new. Almost still unbelievable.

“I… I don’t know,” he finally said, because Steve was clearly waiting for some kind of response. He let out a slow breath and took hold of his doubts, his fears as best he could. “What about you? I’m… I’ve been bi my whole life. This just seems… too good to be true.” 

Steve sighed heavily again. “Maybe not, Tony. Some of my other partners didn’t agree.”

“Steve, I haven’t really got past the part where _you_ gave _me_ a hand-job yet,” he said, laughing wryly, mostly at himself, looking away toward the still-closed window blinds. Away from Steve. Away from the temptation to just accept. Indulge. Anything he could get. It was so strong. A shiver ran through him.

“So you believe I’m just pretending. Tony,” Steve said, a warning note of impatience finally creeping into his voice, “do you honestly think I’d deceive you like that, knowing how you feel about me?”

“No, but…” he began, then Steve’s hand caught his chin and he was being kissed again. Thoroughly. In a surge of slick tongue and warm lips and stolen breath, topped by the heady taste of Steve, already becoming familiar. Necessary. He clutched the back of his neck. Arched up into him. Moaned.

“…mmm… but you’re really damn good at that,” he finished languidly, pulse throbbing, body humming when Steve finally pulled slowly away again.

“I don’t fake feelings, Tony. If I didn’t want to kiss you and touch you, for _myself_ , I wouldn’t. You should know that already.” 

They both heard the urgent beeping start up in the main room. Even through the closed door.

Steve stiffened, head lifting, turning. “That’s mine,” he said, his arms flexing for a moment around Tony, almost protectively, before he let go and rolled away. Tony followed him after an instant, accessing the Iron Man’s comm system. Nothing for him. Not yet. Not a general alert then. Something only for the Commander.

Steve was already out the bedroom door and on into the evening-darkened main room, his bare shoulders gleaming under the kitchen lights as he passed through it on his way to the dining room table where his communicator lay. Tony paused in the kitchen, watching as he picked it up and put the earpiece in.

“Rogers,” Steve acknowledged crisply, gaze shooting back toward Tony at once, a frown drawing down his brows as he listened to whoever was talking – Hill probably – on the other end. “Is it under control now?” He listened further, a hand fisting at his side, his expression going grim. “How many casualties? How much damage to the city?” And Tony moved over to his entertainment system, searching for the remote, knowing the news probably had coverage of whatever was going on if Steve was asking about body counts and property damage.

He flicked the TV monitor on and found CNN. Turned the sound up enough to cover the low murmur of Steve’s voice behind him. Stared without hearing any of the commentary as images of a series of flaming red rifts in the sky above Manhattan filled the wide screen. It was daylight in the feed, late afternoon or early evening. So whatever had happened, had already finished. He wondered then, a little angrily, why it had taken Hill so long to call Steve. He winced as shaky recordings of translucent, glowing creatures with fangs, claws and horns poured across the city in a rampage of destruction.

 _Demons_. Damn it. That meant magic. People on the screen ran in panic, fleeing the things. He saw brief flashes of Carol flying by. Jessica Jones too. Spider-Man. Ben Grimm, of all people, fighting with an Iron Fist dressed in white instead of green for some strange reason. And distant, shaky cell footage of a Luke Cage blown up like Giant Man apparently rampaging through Central Park. Well, _that_ probably wasn’t good. He frowned. They were showing broken patches of street cordoned off now with cars overturned and burning, lots of flashing lights on emergency vehicles, shattered sidewalks and crumbled buildings. More work for Damage Control.

And then an image of the front of the newly re-modeled Avengers Mansion came on the screen, the New York skies thankfully normal again behind it, but with a couple gaping holes in the front corner of the main floor, at the dining room. The metal framework held the building together without problem – it would take more than those holes to bring this new Mansion down –, but the room was obviously trashed.

“Well, shit,” he muttered, glaring. “I just had that whole place rebuilt.”

And then there was Daimon Hellstrom, striding out the front door of the Mansion in an odd blur, stopping on the steps to gesture behind himself and shout something at the crowd of gathered New Yorkers beyond. He looked furious. But then Hellstrom always looked pissed the hell off, he knew. It was his nature.

Tony didn’t bother to turn the sound up to listen to his rant; he’d get a transcript later through the network, or from Pepper. He just sighed now, staring at the mess of the Mansion’s front yard. The gates had been shattered wide too, the security system probably blown. Steve’s hand came down on his shoulder. Squeezed gently. “That’s Danny’s problem now, not yours.”

“The Foundation will get it; it’s Avengers’ business. Who was it? Dormammu? Mephisto?”

“Demonic dimensional breech by something new, apparently. Strange and Hellstrom helped Cage’s people stop it. But,” and Tony shot him a sharp look at the sudden break in his tone, “we lost Jericho Drumm – Doctor Voodoo.”

“Damn. Isn’t he the Sorcerer Supreme?”

“Yes, he was,” Steve said, frowning a moment at the recycling images of chaos and destruction on the screen. Then he turned to face Tony. “I have to go.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Tony said, not turning to face him, his gaze still fixed on the TV. “Why didn’t they call you sooner?”

Steve gave him a sharp look that Tony saw only from the corner of his eye, then sighed. “This is why we have more than one Avengers team, Tony, to take care of these things as they happen. I trust Cage to either do what needs to be done, or call for backup if he needs it. But he doesn’t have to get me involved until it’s over, and then only to update me on the solution that worked for them.” He sounded very grim now. “Which in this case, can’t be repeated.”

Steve’s other hand came up quickly, caught Tony’s far shoulder and turned him toward him. Those broad hands felt so very warm on Tony’s chilled skin as he looked into Steve’s eyes. Swallowed hard.

“I’ve got to go. You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow? At the Tower?” Steve said, his gaze intent, fierce, determined.

Tony’s gaze flickered toward the TV, then back to Steve, and he turned it deliberately wry. “I’m done with my car and New York is still there, so, probably.”

“I want you there, Tony,” Steve said, firmly. “It’s your Tower. It’s the Avengers.”

“Not until the first of the month.”

“Which is tomorrow. Don’t play that game, Tony.” Steve leaned in and kissed him again, quick and thorough. The sheer casual ease of it leaving Tony gasping when he pulled back and gave him a small shake with a flex of his fingers. “And don’t over-think this for once, Tony, just _be there_.”

Then he strode off toward the guest room to get the rest of his uniform. Tony made his way over to the couch on faintly unsteady feet. Plopped down onto it and dropped his face into his hands. His heart was racing again. His body quivering in reaction.

He sat there and tried not to think about the way Steve had just kissed him. Or what he’d told him earlier. The implications of it. Or how he didn’t want Steve to leave yet. Or ever, really. Even though he knew that wasn’t possible. Or even what he really needed. Or how Steve still didn’t trust him. Which was clear from the careful way he spoke about everything to do with SHIELD or the Avengers. He tried not to think about anything except that Steve was doing the job he’d once done –  and doing it far better. Already.

He took refuge in that last. In the self-loathing and guilt it brought instead of the fear. Because he needed that distance now. Needed that distance from the terrifying warmth of hope that Steve’s kiss gave him.

When Steve walked out into the main room again he was Commander Rogers once more. In blue and white, with brown boots and gloves, a holstered weapon on his hip, and the hard-light shield generator that Tony had made for him on his left wrist. Ready for battle.

Seeing him like that, Tony realized he was still only in his trunks. Virtually naked. And cold. Cold without Steve’s presence already. He stood up, and with a thought, the Iron Man poured out, formed into loose pants and a tee shirt. At least one of those things he could take care of.

The Commander gathered up the work he’d left on the dining room table into a messenger bag. Slung it over a broad shoulder.

“You should really get yourself something to eat tonight,” Steve said, coming over to Tony again, a small frown on his face, his gaze remote, mind clearly already focused on everything he’d heard from those in New York. Once they would have discussed it. Talked it out. Planned strategy together. Not now. He cupped Tony’s upper arm in one hand while Tony said nothing, watching him, until his silence finally seemed to catch Steve’s attention. “You doing okay?”

“Fine,” he said tonelessly. “You need to get east. Deal with things.”

Steve frowned. “I really wanted to stay tonight. Especially now. Tony, don’t worry. We’ll have time to work it out.” He flexed his hand on his arm. “And we will. Okay?”

Tony nodded automatically. “Sure. Okay.”

Steve let out an impatient puff of breath and tugged on Tony’s arm, drawing him after him toward the door. When they reached it, he turned him. Put Tony’s shoulders back against the wall beside it and leaned in close, bracketing Tony’s head between his arms. But not touching him. At all. His mouth hovered over Tony’s, a finger’s width away, a determined twist to it now.

“This is the way things are; you know that. This life we’ve chosen… it’s not ever going to be easy. Or smooth. Or give us all the time we need to sort everything out. We’ll have to _make_ that time when we can. That means calling me when you need to, Tony.” His determination deepened into a frown. “I thought this was what you wanted, that you wanted me.”

“I do,” Tony said, the words torn from him, his chest aching again. Always aching. Despite Steve’s warmth reaching out to enfold him again. So tantalizing. He fisted his hands at his sides. Kept them there despite the tingling need that made him want to clutch. To hold. “God, I do, Steve.

Steve’s gaze pierced him. So direct and sure. “Then _you_ kiss _me_. Quit being so passive, Stark. It’s not like you.”

“You’re just… handing me the one thing I’ve always wanted most,” Tony said hoarsely. Licking his lips. Swallowing hard. “Forgive me if I’m still a little afraid this is just some villain’s mind-control trick or something that’ll disappear in a puff of smoke as soon as I touch you.”

“I’m hardly handing anything to you,” Steve countered sharply. “I’ve already warned you this won’t be easy – more like it’s going to be damn tough given who we both are. There are things – so many things – we still need to work out. But this should be the easy part. _Kiss me._ ”

Tony let his gaze fall to Steve’s mouth, longing all but choking him. He knew he was right, he wasn’t acting like himself, but the habit of years, the ingrained reflex of self-denial, was still so strong regarding Steve. Particularly with him about to walk out the door in the next few moments.

Then he found himself swaying forward, as if to counter that thought. His mouth finding Steve’s in a rush, his arms closing around him tightly, body arching close. He licked into Steve’s mouth, urgent and greedy, one hand rising up the broad back, the other dropping to the rise of hip, fingers digging lightly into heavy muscle in both places, shifting him nearer. Steve made a low noise in his throat, almost a startled sound, and Tony leaned back, drawing Steve’s weight against him onto the wall, blood racing, pounding, searing through his veins. 

This. This was what he wanted. Had always wanted. The freedom to do this. With Steve.

He slid his tongue up under Steve’s lip, teased, then swept it slow and thorough over the lower one. Nipped at that one gently. Kept his tongue moving, dodging Steve’s, all the time reaching, lips sliding, nipping, breath coming short. Until Steve was groaning deeply in reply, his head canting abruptly to force the kiss deeper, his tongue driving past Tony’s in a rush suddenly, overpowering his mouth in return.

Steve’s arms still bracketed his head, but his hands were in Tony’s hair now, fingers raking back into it, working their way down his skull until he had his thumbs under Tony’s jaw again. Held him in place with that grip then and ravaged Tony’s mouth between hard and fast breaths. Diving back after each. Wet and savage. Until dizziness and growing lack of air forced Tony to break away. To gasp for it, his mouth by Steve’s ear, open, desperate as Steve’s mouth dragged down to the join of his neck. Hot breath urgent against him, a hint of teeth, then lips that sucked lightly on his skin.

“Oh yes oh god,” Tony cried out, his voice low, throbbing. Arching himself up into the draw of it, rocking his hips encouragingly against Steve’s. “Mark me. Jesus. Yes.” He felt the sharpening pull. Steve’s hissed in breath. Then the release of it. His skin aching. Tingling with blood. Oh yes. He could feel the sting of a bruise. _Proof_. Proof even he couldn’t deny. He groaned again, shuddering, pleased.

Steve broke away suddenly, dropping his forehead onto Tony’s shoulder, his chest heaving as he struggled to steady his breathing, taking half a step back, even as Tony’s hands fell to his hips, and around, clutching. Steve was obviously trying to calm himself down, his hands flat on the wall again, while Tony just held on tighter, tried to drag him close again, whimpering slightly, leaning forward so his lips caught Steve’s earlobe and sucked on it.

“Tony, Tony, stop,” Steve said hoarsely, tilting his chin up so that Tony’s lips dragged down his throat instead. “We can’t… I have to go.”

“Five more minutes,” he murmured against the pulse throbbing in Steve’s neck. Fast. Faster. ”Those cars are fast. Oh god your ass is fantastic.” He flexed his hands against the sleek curve of muscle, gripping, stroking.

“Tony!” Steve laughed once, groaned, twisted his head down and met Tony’s mouth roughly again. But broke away far too soon for his taste. He rocked up into Steve’s body, hard and eager, and felt the bulge of a starting erection against his upper thigh.

He drew back to stare down, greedy, whimpering, even as Steve clamped his hands on his shoulders, pressing Tony back into the wall as he set himself away, his expression stern now.

“No. I have to go.”

Tony looked up at him sidelong, panting, something suspiciously like relief – or maybe triumph – spiraling up inside of him. Either one was dangerously heady. “You’re getting hard.”

“I never said that was the problem,” Steve said firmly, a slight flush on his cheeks, his eyes heavy and dark as they held Tony’s gaze, “but I definitely don’t have time for this right now. I have a meeting in Washington. Soon. I have to go.”

They stared at each other, Tony struggling with himself. Now that he’d allowed himself to touch, he never wanted to stop. But Steve was right. Steve had duties to attend to. And stepping on Steve’s sense of duty right off the bat would certainly doom things, regardless of the million other things that already doomed them. He knew better than that, at least. He hoped. Oh god. How was he going to make it until tomorrow? Until he could see Steve again? Tony squeezed his eyes shut and smacked his head back against the wall, hard, hoping to distract himself. The thump was loud in the taut silence, leaving his head throbbing a bit.

“Okay. Go. Shit. Now. Please.” He thumped his head back against the wall again. Harder. “Go so I can go whack off again. Jesus. I feel seventeen again around you, Rogers. What the hell.”

Steve shook his head slightly at the rapid spill of words. Reached up a hand and slid his fingers behind Tony’s head to soothe the sore spot on his scalp.

“Don’t do that. Yes, I’m going now.” He stared at Tony’s mouth for a moment. Then his gaze flicked up. Caught Tony’s again. Hot. Intent. “Be in New York early,” he said firmly. Then he turned, yanked the door open, shut, and was gone.

Tony slumped back against the wall, his mouth still throbbing from Steve’s, his cock more than half hard again under his loose pants, and groaned in disappointment. Closed his eyes, fighting himself. Fighting impulse. To put the suit on. To follow. He opened his eyes after a long moment. Took a deep, steadying breath.

And stayed there, listening, until he heard the flying car take off. Then he pushed himself away from the wall. Moved across the condo toward the kitchen, mind flipping through what needed to be done, what had to be done, what could wait. First, more coffee. Then, get a head start on structuring Stark Resilient for the move from R&D mode into production. He needed Pepper for that. And Mrs. Arbogast. Carson Wyche was about to be a very busy man.

He reached up. Touched the warm spot on his neck. And _he_ was about to go home.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Firmly AU. This Heroic Age is obviously not entirely Marvel’s Heroic Age. * Indecent and catastrophic* liberties are hereby taken with the plot and dialog of Avengers 1-6 (The Thor & Iron Man Avengers, not the Luke Cage Avengers. Yeah, confusing.) by Brian Michael Bendis. *hisses at Bendis*
> 
> Dear Marvel: About the internal consistency of your 616 universe… *breaks out into hysterical laughter, wipes away tear* Okay, yeah...never mind. I fix what I can.
> 
>  
> 
> [ and derp!author now apologizes to those who may have realized this already and are laughing behind their hands at me: Rhodey went to Battleworld as Iron Man, not Tony. Tony was Drinking and Extra-Angsty at that time – though Marvel Continuity is so twisted getting exact timing right is… pretty much impossible (retcon much too?). But there really are only a few villains who can punch through dimensions easily soooo… count this as my bad and move on, ‘k? -_-; ]
> 
>  
> 
> \-------------------------------------

“See? Responsibility, Immortus. Did you learn anything from these little kids? Did you learn anything at all?” the green-skinned Banner said, scorn in his tone. Immortus grimaced, and bowed his head before letting it fade into a smile. Now he could finally end this farce… but then there was a flicker. A warning tremor. From some when. Somehow.

Immortus looked up abruptly from his position kneeling in front of Banner, still ignoring the cluster of disdainful children of heroes behind him. Beside Banner, Tony Stark’s head – white-haired, deeply lined – jerked up too, his weary, hopeless eyes wide with wonder, his shocked expression flashing over into something like joy.

“Steve? What the hell?” he said as existence shuddered around them. Banner spun around with a snarl of new awareness and fresh rage, glare fixed on Immortus, his huge hands already in fists.

Knowing Banner would never reach him, Immortus howled in frustration as everything he’d planned for, schemed for once again came to naught. “It wasn’t that accursed Kree boy after all… _damn you, Rogers!_ ”

Then, before he could escape it, the time-stream they inhabited shattered around them. Reformed.

Light filled the air.

~*~

Ultron stood on top of the smoking ruins of New York City above observing the monument it had preserved to its own victory: Avengers Tower. Whole. Perfect. Empty. Sunlight flared off the distant roof, flat and bare. It felt nothing at the sight. Wanted for nothing. For it was triumphant.

It had finally defeated its creator and all those who had stood with him. The Avengers. Humanity. Earth.

Then reality shimmered. Flexed. Stilled. Ultron scanned the area for a thousand miles around itself. Nothing appeared to have changed.

But as its unblinking gaze returned to the Tower, the silver head cocked slowly as if to catch a distant sound. “Interesting.”

In the distance, the Tower glowed with light.

~*~

Iron Man landed on the roof of Avengers Tower a little before noon Eastern the next day. Tony frowned behind the faceplate as he looked around. There was a SHIELD transport helicopter parked on the roof already. The pilot and co-pilot both stared at him stonily and offered no greetings. Which meant they may have known him from his days as Director. Or they carried a grudge from when he’d slammed the Helicarrier into the Void in Oklahoma. A surprising number of SHIELD agents had taken that loss hard; even though it had been thoroughly compromised by HAMMER at the time anyway.

He strode toward the elevator, not bothering to take off his helmet. He’d hoped to be here much earlier than this, but Pepper and Wyche had needed his input on the company transition and it had taken longer than he’d thought. That wasn’t even counting the time wasted by the spectacular amount of shit he’d endured from the lot of them for the purple-red hickey on his neck. He’d neglected to consider how visible it might be when he went in to the office and swapped the armor into a suit coat and slacks. Even Mrs. Arbogast had gotten in on the fun.

Touching above the spot under his armor with a fingertip now, a small smile curving his lips, Tony punched the button for the highest of the former SHIELD levels with the other hand. Steve had scheduled this first Avengers meeting in one of the secured conference rooms there and he was almost late.

The car paused at the penthouse level on its way down, the doors opening to reveal Wolverine in another brown and yellow variant of his X-Man costume, a cigar clamped firmly between his teeth.

“Stark,” he said, moving inside, a cloud of cigar smoke trailing him.

“Logan,” Tony replied, nodding once. The car started moving again. “Nice of you to finally show.” Tony wondered if he’d been in Utopia last week, during the alert. That might have explained why Steve hadn’t been able to get a hold of him. “Didn’t Cage recruit you?” 

“Yeah. I’m a popular guy these days.” Logan said gruffly, shooting him a look from the corner of his eyes. “Heard you were too, out West.

“I took care of it,” Tony said, narrowing his eyes through the helmet. “So, yesterday looked like fun. Fire. Demons. The sky falling. At least you kept it near the Park.” Logan pulled his cigar out and bared his teeth at him in a feral grin, his eyes shadowed and unreadable through his mask, then he shrugged.

“Got handled, didn’t it?”

“Seems that way,” Tony said. “Too bad about Drumm.”

Logan scowled. “Didn’t follow the plan he’d set up himself. Not sure what went wrong there, but then that magic crap tends ta go sideways nine times out o’ ten anyway no matter what the magic boys slingin’ it like ta claim.”

Tony didn’t bother to repress a shudder inside his suit. “Ugh. Magic. Hate it.”

“An’ don’ the whole world know it,” Logan said wryly. “You’re not the only one, bub. Magic has a hate-on for us lately too. At least Drumm’s dead bro does... Hey, you gonna fix up those living levels again? I could use a place in the city that don’t smell like diapers.”

“Eventually,” Tony said, more glad than ever that he’d been on the other coast yesterday, as the doors slid open onto the hallway of the main former SHIELD level and he strode out past Logan. “I just got the Tower back today. I’m not quite as rich as I used to be… it’ll take a few more weeks to get everything up there cleaned up, restored and secure again. Then you can have your diaper-free room.” They walked together through the recently-vacated halls and offices toward the corner conference room where they were scheduled to meet the others as he spoke and Tony finally pulled back the helmet. Logan’s cigar smoke was much easier to take in the well-ventilated hallway versus the enclosed elevator car.

“Well. Now ain’t that somethin’.” Logan’s voice sounded almost thoughtful. Tony looked over his shoulder at him with a frown, but could see nothing unusual about Logan’s expression. At least not through his Wolverine mask. “Yanno, there’s not much of Osborn left up there. Rogers and Hill were pretty thorough.”

Tony laughed wryly and shook his head. Knowing Maria Hill, there were probably just new bugs in place of the old. “I’ll still do my own checks, thanks. I may ozone-sterilize the place too, just to be sure.”

“You’re the tech guy. Not that I’d mind. That Venom bastard’s reek is everywhere.” Logan curled his lip. They were almost to the room, passing through a small cube-farm of desks, when Logan paused by one, popped a claw, sliced off the glowing end of his cigar and dropped the cherry into an abandoned coffee cup. Tony stared at him pointedly until Logan crushed out the smoldering end with his thumb with an annoyed sniff. 

“Heard a girl version o‘ you paid us a visit too,” Logan said then, wiping ash off his glove on the back of the desk chair and tucking the snuffed cigar into a belt pouch.

“Heard?” Tony raised a brow at him, looking at him sidelong as he folded his armored arms over his chest briefly before moving on.

Logan shrugged, resumed walking too. “Smelled. Same thing. She spent some time here.”

“Just one night,” Tony said, his gut clenching again. He’d have to remember to check the alternate lab for surprises later. “We shipped her back the next day. Reed saw to it.”

“I’da paid money ta see that,” Logan said with a wolfish grin. Tony just rolled his eyes and fought back a sliver of unease. Logan might have appealed to her. She’d seemed more his type. Which made him blanch a bit for even thinking it; she was him. In a way. And even at his lowest ebb he’d never thought of Logan that way himself – too hairy and prone to stabbing things. Never mind how much he drank.

“Why does everyone say that?” Tony lamented with a shake of his head.

Logan just smirked. “Must be your playboy image, Stark. Or the idea o’ seeing you in a dress.”

“Kinky,” a low, throaty female voice said from behind them. Logan was grinning blatantly now, while Tony threw his gaze back over his shoulder, tensing only slightly to find Jessica Drew standing there in her signature red-and-yellow costume, the mask, as always, firmly in place. “Especially with the goatee.”

“Who’s wearing a dress? You, Logan? Should I start running now?” was Hawkeye’s contribution as he came around a corner toward them in his own familiar purple and dark blue gear. It was good to see him with a bow in his hands again, Tony realized. Very good. Far more Avengers-like.

“Nobody’s wearing a dress. Clint. Jessica.” Tony nodded to them both, then pushed open the door to the conference room. Inside, Thor loomed on the far side of the long table, arms crossed over his chest, hammer hanging at his side. Tony smiled at him, honestly pleased to see him there. Thor returned his smile with a small one of his own before his expression went solemn again, and he nodded to the others trailing in behind him.

Tony’s eyes scanned the room, but there was no sign of Steve yet. He found Spider-Man in a corner, clinging to the wall by the floor-to-ceiling windows. Neither of them said anything, though Spider-Man at least gave a small wave which Tony returned with a brief nod. The conference table chairs had been pushed to the far wall, away from the table, and a service table set up with coffee pot, water pitcher, glasses and cups. He moved toward it automatically, drawn by the scent of Jarvis’ distinctive brew.

“Tony, good Jarvis has wish of a moment of your time,” Thor offered him as he passed close. Then he lifted his head and spoke loudly, “Wolverine. Spider-Woman. Clint. We are well-met this day.”

Clint beamed at him, moved in close to offer his hand. Thor clasped arms with him gravely.

“Heya, big guy, good to see you here,” Clint said. “Been a while since we’ve been on a team together.”

“It is good to see you as well, and in the garb of Hawkeye once more, Clint Barton,” Thor said. “This omen bodes well for our future endeavors.”

“Glad you think so,” Clint said as two doors opened at once. Busy pouring himself a cup of coffee, Tony glanced up at the door nearest him to find Edwin Jarvis smiling at him. Behind them, someone else had entered the room through the main door. Clint and Logan were offering greetings to the newcomer – though he couldn’t tell who it was just yet – and noticing Spider-Man in his corner.

“Master Anthony,” Jarvis said. “It is good to have you back in the city again, sir.”

“Jarvis,” he said, relieved to see him smiling at him. “Hill got your rooms cleared out?”

“Master Steven supervised it personally, I’m told. Ms. Hill gave me final clearance to return this morning. It’s a great relief to be home again, sir, may I say, though there is still much to do upstairs.”

He clapped Jarvis on the shoulder gently, well aware of his armored hand. “That there is. I’ll let you have free rein as soon as I make sure it’s secure myself. Give me a week and you can fix up the main kitchen exactly the way you like it again. Start buying what you need now and give me a full appliance list – top of the line stuff only.”

“Of course, sir,” Jarvis said with another small, pleased smile as Tony took a grateful sip from his cup. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the flavor roll over his tongue. Smooth and rich and strong.

“Perfect brew, as always Jarvis,” he said with a smile, and Jarvis nodded solemnly in return, his eyes bright with affection and pride. “You are most welcome, Master Anthony.”

Then from the corner of his eye he saw Steve sweep into the room and the feeling in the room changed. Grew charged. Expectant. Tony turned around to watch him pause by Bucky in the Captain America costume, who’d apparently been the one in before him, clap him on the back, then move to stand at the head of the long table, his palms flat on it as he leaned forward, face set, gaze intent.

“Gather ‘round, people,” he said, shooting a brief glance directly at Tony, a faint shadow there in the angle of his brows as the assembled group obligingly shifted closer to the table. Except for Spider-Man who just moved close enough to hang upside down from the ceiling at the far end near the windows.

Tony stayed where he was by the side table, all but hugging his mug, and trying to focus on something other than the way Steve’s shoulders stretched out that uniform top. He’d had his hands all over those muscles just yesterday. And Steve’s hands had been on him too. He could barely believe it now, and oh god how was he going to make it through Avengers meetings without letting everyone know he was staring at Steve’s mouth and imagining it doing things that had nothing to do with work instead?

Across the room Logan let out a sharp bark of sound. Not a laugh, more a noise of amused disgust. Tony glared at him briefly, then tried to distract himself with coffee. Incipient erections in the armor? Always a bad idea. All he could think was how glad he was they’d never had a regular telepath on the roster.

Steve shot a sharp look at Logan for the noise too, frowned, then passed his gaze over them all, skipping over Tony this time, as if he somehow suspected the inappropriate turn of Tony’s thoughts. “All right, Avengers. You… all of you will be the face of a new era. And I chose each of you deliberately.”

Thor lifted his chin as Steve looked first to him. “For your nobility and strength.” To Clint. “Your cunning and bravery.” To Spider-Man on the ceiling. “Power and responsibility.”

Spider-Man drew back his head as if startled. “Really?”

To Logan. “Ruthlessness and selflessness.” Logan grinned his hunter’s grin at him in return. Toothy and dangerous, his expression still mostly amused. “If you say so.”

To Bucky. “Symbolism.” To Jessica. “Savvy.” And then he finally turned to Tony. “And a clear view of the future.”

Tony shifted uncomfortably. “I _really_ need to talk to you for a second.”

“Okay, Tony,” he said, nodding, his gaze clear and steady. “Don’t go far, people, there’s more. Jarvis has coffee for you all.”

Steve came over to him, put a hand on his shoulder – as he’d done a thousand times before with the armor between them – and guided him toward the back of the room, away from the refreshments and Logan’s bee-line toward them. Tony could swear Logan was chuckling to himself too, which made no sense.

“Steve,” Tony said, his voice low, his throat tight, his palms damp inside his gauntlets. It was all he could do to stop himself from reaching out and pulling him close. “This isn’t going to work.”

“It will,” Steve said firmly. “There’s a time and a place, Tony. It’ll be fine.”

He shook his head. “I don’t… not right now. This is… it’s still too…” _Unbelievable_ , he wanted to say. “ _New,_ ” he substituted instead, lifting his gaze to Steve’s. Let him see the ache in him then, his tongue slipping out to wet dry lips quickly. Saw a flare of something answer in Steve’s eyes, the brief darkening of them as his gaze flickered down to the motion then back up again. Then Steve’s hand rose and caught Tony’s elbow as he leaned closer.

“That was why I wanted you here early, Tony,” Steve said quietly, his mouth firming a little with disapproval, the heat vanishing behind cool control. And oh god that was hot too. Tony swallowed hard. “To work some of that out.”

“I meant to… the company… work… Pepper needed me to sign…” Fragmented sentences trailed off as Steve looked at him steadily, his gaze unyielding. “Yeah, I know. I should have been here sooner.”

“It’ll be fine,” Steve repeated, releasing his arm and stepping half a stride back. But not far enough. Not for Tony’s frantically skipping pulse. “I’m not running the team.”

“You’re not?” Tony said sharply.

Steve shook his head. “I have the entire country to worry about.”

“Who _is_ going to run the team?” Tony asked, lifting his chin, suddenly aware that almost everyone in the room was watching them, either covertly or openly, as if expecting them to come to blows. Only Logan looked relaxed. While Thor was staring with determination out the tall windows over the length of Manhattan, his arms folded tightly over his chest, a deep scowl on his face that Tony knew meant he was steeling himself not to intervene. He’d probably have to say something to Thor eventually. Explain. He winced inside. That conversation could get… interesting.

“The best person for the job,” Steve replied calmly, interrupting his wandering thoughts.

He couldn’t help the disbelief in his tone as his gaze snapped back to Steve. “ _Me?_ ”

“No,” Steve said wryly, glancing over his shoulder toward the main door, then jerking a thumb in that direction. “No, Tony, _her_.”

Tony’s eyes shifted that way and found Maria Hill standing just inside the door in full SHIELD uniform, a tablet under her arm. She met his startled look steadily, having obviously spotted Steve’s gesture too, and gave him a mocking nod of the head. “Maria Hill reporting for duty.” She looked around the room at the clustered heroes. “Boys. Spider-Lady.”

“I’m okay with that. Mostly okay. Yeah, that’ll work.” He let out a slow breath, changing gears in his mind, trying to calm himself. This he could do. If he didn’t have Steve _right there_ just now, he’d have time to adjust. To get a handle on himself. To learn to do this all over again. It helped he was still annoyed with Hill from Monday too. That irritation gave him something else to focus on.

“Good.” Steve turned toward the rest of the room again, still standing close to Tony. “Avengers, answer to Maria as you would me. Cage’s team, your team, this says to the world: we have it covered. Something for every possible scenario.”

Maria Hill looked to Steve. “Is this everybody?” she asked.

Steve looked around the room. Frowned. “No, I thought he’d show.”

“Who’s missing?” Jessica Drew asked curiously.

“He who?” said Clint.

“Uh, hey guys…” Spider-Man called out, his head whipping around. Then there was a glow, a surge of energy, alarms in his suit blared and the helmet snapped into place over his face, the HUD already scrolling a flood of data before his eyes. A figure appeared amid the storm of energy. Tall. Armored. Bristling with technology that didn’t belong here.

“I am KANG! Listen carefully, you who think of yourselves as heroes. I have travelled through the great reaches of time to bring you a warning…”

Then Thor blasted Kang back through the heavily reinforced structural glass window and across the city, following him out through the shattered material a heart-beat later. Another heart-beat and Tony was jetting after the two of them too.

His helmet sensors picked up Clint’s words from behind him as he cleared the sill. “ _That_ would be what it’s like to be on the Avengers with Thor.”

“Whoa! Cool!” Spider-Woman said before launching herself out the window in pursuit as well.

“Holy crap!” Spider-Man said as he leaped out right after her, grabbing Jessica’s hastily lowered hands so she could carry him across the sky. Beyond their banter he heard Steve ordering Maria Hill to get sky-sleds for the non-flyers of the team. He let that go for the moment, reassured that the team was following, focusing his attention on where Kang was just starting to struggle upright on the rooftop a dozen blocks away from the Tower, moving far more stiffly than usual.

“Foul one,” Thor said in ringing tones as they both settled to the rooftop near their foe, “you have chosen a poor course of action this day.”

“Yeah, I gotta tell ya, Kang,” Tony added, the flush of extra adrenaline in his system loosening his tongue. “You should go back to the future and look up online just exactly how badly you timed _this_ bit of business, because—“

Then Kang rolled over, raised a hand holding… something… high, and Tony’s mind blanked with panic.

“I know _exactly_ what time this is,” Kang said smugly.

“Oh. My. God. Okay. Everyone _back_. Back down. _Back down!_ ” He threw his armored arms wide, barring Thor and Spider-Woman from advancing, every sensor in his HUD trained on Kang.

He shouldn’t remember it. He knew that. The memory should have been gone, just like everything else of that year. But _that device_ … he knew it. In his gut. In his soul. It was _his_ , that thing in Kang’s hand. Something so horrifying and brilliant and terrible that it had apparently persisted through the wipe of his mind.

Or he’d left it there on purpose. As a warning to himself.

Deceptively small. Egg-shaped. Glowing faintly with power, the device fit neatly into the palm of Kang’s hand, just visible through the spread of armored fingers clutching it. He barely heard the comments of the two spider-people. Only registered the tone: quips to soothe themselves in the face of danger. He understood that impulse, he did his own fair share of banter at times too, but horror gripped him so tightly now he couldn’t relax.

“… _evil_ Silly Putty from the future,” Spider-Man was saying.

“This isn’t a joke,” he said hoarsely. Pointed at Kang. Shouted. “Where did you get that? _Where did you get it?!”_

“There is not a weapon in all of time that I cannot get my hands on,” Kang said, grinning smugly. “You know that; it’s part of my charm.”

Tony’s HUD registered the approach of the rest of the Avengers on magnetic sleds, but he didn’t dare turn. Didn’t dare take his attention off the thing in Kang’s hand, even as Steve strode up beside him.

“But I haven’t even _built_ that yet,” Tony said in protest. In explanation. In apology.

“But you will,” Kang said, sneering.

“I won’t,” Tony countered desperately.

“You did.” Kang drove the nail in further.

“What is it?” Thor asked, his voice ominously hushed, alerted by Tony’s reaction. Tony blanched. “It’s… it doesn’t matter. He has the upper hand.”

Kang grinned sadistically. “Tell them what it is, Stark, _or I will_.”

He made himself speak then, conscious of Steve beside him. Thor on his other side. The others clustered behind them, listening. “It’s a doomsday device – a dark matter accelerator. If he wants it to, it’ll turn all of us inside out. The entire city. Maybe the whole state.”

“Why would you make that?” Jessica asked, horror in her voice.

“Was life not challenging enough for you as-is?” Spider-Man added with a wail.

“I didn’t,” he said, swallowing hard, noticing Steve’s pointed silence. “I thought of it and I wrote it down. Once. I _haven’t_ built it. I promised myself I never would.”

“And yet,” Spider-Man said, more bitterness thickening his voice than Tony expected.

“He has the upper hand,” Tony repeated heavily. Steve straightened his shoulders beside him, took a single step forward. Ahead of Tony. He wanted to grab his arm. Yank him back. But knew it wouldn’t do any good anyway. It was Kang’s show for now.

“What do you want, Kang?” Steve demanded, his glare never wavering from the would-be conqueror climbing slowly to his feet in front of him.

“Who is he?” Bucky asked from the far side of Steve, the shield out in front of him, his hand on the holster of his weapon.

“He’s a thief and a murderer,” Steve said shortly, attention still on Kang. Tony could almost feel the tension rolling from him. It matched his own.

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“It’s before your time as Captain America, Bucky. He’s from the future. He’s a time traveler.”

“A time warrior,” Kang interjected haughtily, frowning at Steve.

“A time terrorist,” Steve shot back, meeting the frown with a firm stare.

“That is an example of your limited perception of the universe,” Kang said with condescension clear in each word.

“What do you want?” Steve snapped again and Tony had to force himself to keep from stepping between them. Steve didn’t have the shield anymore – Bucky did. And Bucky didn’t know how treacherous Kang was…

“I’m here with a warning,” Kang said, lifting his chin. Gaze shifting beyond Steve now. To the others. “About your children. Reality is coming to an end, and it’s mostly their fault...”

There was a jump then. A hitch in everything, in reality. A confused moment of disorientation. Images wavered before his eyes. Mirages? Memories? Illusions? Then a flare of light surrounded them all. Pulsed out, away. Kang staggered on his feet, fell back. Tony staggered too, fell to a knee, armor HUD flaring, surging with an impossible cascade of data, insistent and demanding. Too much information. Thor bellowed in sudden rage. Bucky grunted in pain and fell forward, to his knees, the shield clattering to the rooftop beside him, Steve turned to him, alarmed, calling his name.

Logan snarled and popped his claws with a bloody tearing of flesh. “ _Apocalypse!_ ”

“You’re lying,” Tony said to Kang, looking up, one fisted hand on the ground, one knee raised. He pushed himself back to his feet, standing up straight as his HUD settled. There were things he knew now. Things he shouldn’t know – like how it felt to have a laser pierce his brain, killing him. Things that had never happened; that never would, now, as time re-settled around them. Other things that still might happen. There was always that danger, of course. It was the future. The future wasn’t certain until they actually _lived_ it. No matter what Kang said. He grinned viciously behind his helmet, narrowed gaze fixed on Kang, no, Immortus, he now knew, old hatred burning in his gut. “It’s _you_. It’s because of you.”

“What was that? What just happened?” Spider-Man said, something like panic in his voice. “Did some of us get showered in dinosaur guts or not?”

“Oh God,” Clint said. “Oh God no… _Wanda!_ ”

“What _were_ those things?” Jessica Drew breathed, horrified.

“I saw visions of Apocalypse and his debased Horsemen. And of the great eater of worlds, Galactus,” Thor said, hatred in his voice. “I fought them all. And strange three-legged mechanical foes.”

Kang stared at him, eyes wide with something that Tony would swear was terror. “What did you change?” he demanded. “ _What have you done, Stark?!_ What’s different now?!”

“Nothing that matters to you, Immortus,” he said, stepping forward, his heart beating frantically in his chest, his lungs aching. Though he thought he knew exactly what was different. It was almost too much to believe that something so seemingly simple… He knew he was safe in the eye of the still-settling time flux for at least a few more seconds. Tony reached out and took the egg-shaped device from Immortus’ hand. It no longer glowed. He looked down and crushed it to fragments in his armored fist while he could. “ _Run_. Run, old man, before I sic Thor on you again.”

Immortus – under his old mask of Kang – stared at him, face dark with rage. “It’s not over, Stark. It’ll never be over. You know what’s coming. You can’t escape it completely, not even now, with his help. I’ll have my victory yet.”

“Tony! Get away from him!” Steve shouted behind him suddenly. “Anyone who isn’t hurt, get ready to stop Kang. Maria! Bucky needs medical attention! Get him out of here!”

He ignored Steve’s shouted orders for a moment longer, wholly focused on the enemy before him. “Maybe, Immortus. But _you lost this round_. Go. Before time and reality finish shaking themselves out and you _can’t_ anymore. I’m sick of your face.”

Immortus snarled in frustration and fumbled at his belt. He vanished then in a swirl of space-time nothingness that made his HUD scream at him. Tony staggered back from the spot where he had somehow inadvertently changed _everything_ and time settled smoothly back into place.

“Okay. That was the freakiest thing I’ve ever had happen to me,” Spider-Man said from his position crouched near the edge of the roof. “And that’s saying a lot. Because, I’m me, and hey, honestly, freaky stuff happens to me, like, every day. Usually _before_ I get my good morning breakfast of...”

“Be silent,” Thor said to him, staring thoughtfully at Tony. “Much has changed in this realm in only a very short span. Iron Man, are you unharmed, my friend?”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” he said, turning away from the shards of the device he never wanted to build, but knew how to in great detail. He could almost feel it taking shape under his fingertips, the itch to re-create it strong. Almost overpowering. He clenched his hands into fists instead and tried to will himself to forget the design. Again. Tried to concentrate on the things he now knew he needed to change about his armor interface in order to prepare for the return of Ultron instead. That thought alone made him feel sick with dread.

“Hey. Alien boy. When did you get here?” Maria Hill was saying. Tony looked back. Saw the man in black and white Kree armor now standing beside her on the roof top, his helmet down, his eyes wide with shock. It was the first honest emotion Tony could remember seeing on the Kree soldier’s face.

Only he’d never met him before.

Noh-Varr, formerly Marvel Boy, now calling himself the Protector, and their most recently recruited Avenger, said, his voice unsteady, “Iron Man, how… what have you done to the space-time continuum?”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ADDITIONAL CHAPTER WARNING: Potential disturbing imagery. Non-permanent character deaths (due to time-travel reset), physical mutilation, possession.
> 
> Author’s Note: Firmly AU. This Heroic Age is obviously not entirely Marvel’s Heroic Age. Major liberties are hereby taken with the plot and dialog of Avengers 1-6 (The Thor & Iron Man Avengers) by Brian Michael Bendis. Bendis is a damn troll. He teases us with the shippiness but treats the characters like utter crap while doing so. *hisses furiously at him* 
> 
> This is the part where I take the next 5 issues of this annoying time-travel Kang arc and _wring them like a towel_ for my own purposes. If it bothers you deeply that I do this to canon, the emergency exit is clearly marked on your browser window. 
> 
> ~*~*~*~*~

Tony stared back at Noh-Varr blankly from behind his helmet. An urgent flick of his gaze confirmed that Steve was still present and the tightness that threatened in his chest loosened a bit. With people appearing out of time, it was good to make certain they weren’t disappearing into it as well. But Steve was there, kneeling beside a crumpled Bucky Barnes. The other man had collapsed to the rooftop; a quick scan revealed no blood, no trauma, no visible damage on his shiny blue version of the Captain America uniform. And there was no reason Tony could remember for Bucky to be injured either. There had been no fight here. Yet there he was lying unconscious on the ground.

“I think I may have just fixed the future,” Tony said finally, even as his mind was still trying to process far too many conflicting memories of his own. Memories that hadn’t really happened yet, and probably never would now. He hoped.

“Oh. Is that all,” Spider-Man said, throwing his hands up in the air. “Wait… is that good or bad?”

“What was Kang saying about… our children?” Clint asked, his tone shaken.

“Aye,” Thor said, frowning deeply. “I would know more of this as well.”

“This juncture is too early,” Noh-Varr said, staring at Tony in alarm. “We have transgressed a time-critical barrier. _How did this happen?_ ”

“I don’t know, but it’s your time-machine, Noh. It had to be something you did,” Tony said, only half his attention on Noh-Varr’s words, the rest on the data now dancing through his HUD. Readings and temporal scans that he hadn’t taken yet. Terabytes of data on a world he hoped would never come to be. He started the suit on a diagnostic, looking for the holes he had learned could let Ultron into him again. They seemed to be gone, but he’d have to run a validation later. He’d received a full upgrade of security in the future. One of blood and pain and screaming agony as his future self had sawed away parts of the suit tied to his bones _._ He’d have to have help for a check of the wetware parts and their recovery – and _that_ he wasn’t looking forward to doing. At all. “I’m pretty sure that’s why you’re here now anyway.”

“That’s impossible,” Noh-Varr said flatly. “The machine… it cannot.”

“We musta overshot somehow,” Logan said, his voice rough, but his words confirming Tony’s suspicions. He remembered the loop of time they had been tricked into visiting too. “Don’t know what’s up with Barnes though. He was fine before.”

“Well, whatever happened… it obviously worked,” Tony said, watching Steve. “I sent Kang packing and everything’s safe now. Right?”

Logan snorted. “Well, ’cept for Barnes, o’ course.”

Steve looked up, and Tony tensed, expecting sharp words from the Commander. But Steve just glanced between the three of them, a line of stress showing between his eyes, but his expression otherwise neutral. “Thor, Spider-Man, help me get Bucky onto a mag-sled. We need to get him medical attention ASAP.” Tony’s gaze stayed on him, surprised by Steve’s restraint. The things he’d just said. They were the kind of arrogance on his part that usually made Steve seethe these days. He hadn’t in any way imagined Steve would grant him any slack on that even after last night. _Especially_ not after last night.

Yet there Steve was, just fussing over the supine Bucky instead of saying anything to him at all and the flicker of alarm in his gut grew stronger. Something… wasn’t right.

~*~

“Ain’t nobody talking this time.” Logan said to Barnes on the far side of the room. They were back in Nick Fury’s derelict barbershop safe-house for the second time, giving Noh-Varr the quiet and space to re-create his time machine for the _third_ time. He was going to have to start naming the time-loops they’d survived soon, Tony thought bitterly. Like hurricanes. Just to keep from confusing _himself_.

“Guess we’re all just a little rattled.” Barnes replied, his voice hushed.

“Ain’t we. And we ain’t exactly the rattlin’ type.” 

Bucky grimaced through the Captain America cowl, still looking more than a little overwhelmed by everything they had already endured – Apocalypse and his Horsemen, Simon’s sudden, inexplicable attack, warping through time. He hadn’t been an Avenger long, after all. Or even a hero for all that long. He just didn’t have the background for the scale of it – though Tony sometimes wished he didn’t either. The destruction… the absolute destruction… the sheer _losses_ that future held. Tony bit the inside of his own cheek until it bled, trying to stop himself from thinking about it too hard. “No. We are not,” Bucky said.

“And nobody’s talking about if it ain’t too late to fix this,” Logan said, asking without asking.

Tony ignored him, his gaze flickering back down to his work, impassive behind his closed helmet. Focused on re-running the time-degradation calculations he’d lifted from Noh-Varr’s machine instead. He needed to know how fast time was fragmenting. How long did they have before the recursive loops were too fast to counter? To even perceive? They were already down to mere hours...

“It’s ready,” Noh-Varr announced abruptly, standing up. Tony stood up too, shunting the grim data and formulas to the edge of his HUD, and tried to steady himself with the knowledge that he hadn’t seen Steve’s fate in any of the loops. Not yet. Not here. And that was good, maybe. That he might still be safe, somewhere, some _when_. At least he was trying very hard to convince himself of that fact.

“Do it,” Tony ordered, through the lingering taste of blood in his mouth. Noh-Varr looked at him steadily, waiting as Logan and Barnes crossed the room, moving into range of Noh-Varr’s arm-mounted time-machine. “Is your armor prepared?” Noh-Varr asked him quietly.

“I’m ready,” Tony said, already running the preventative sub-routines his older self had installed, ignoring the ache it set up in his bones, along his spine over the half-healed, hastily-done changes. “Get us where we need to go”

Light flared around the four of them and they were gone.

~*~

“I shall gladly convey our stricken companion to aid,” Thor said, striding away from Tony and across the rooftop to Steve’s side, crouching down beside him and the crumpled Bucky.

“Wait. Wait. Wait. What’s going on here?” Hawkeye demanded plaintively, spreading his arms wide, bow still ready in one hand. “Didn’t something just happen with Kang?” Spider-Woman stood huddled with her arms around her. While Spider-Man nodded vigorously along with Hawkeye, his posture anxious too as his head swiveled to face everyone in turn. “Yeah! Exploding dinosaurs and War of the Worlds knock-offs and some kind of cosmic menace invitational. I mean, _Galactus_ was munching on the Empire State Building over there!” He wilted slightly, looking suddenly unsure. “Wasn’t he?” Maria Hill stood with her hands on her hips, staring down at Steve and Bucky darkly.

Slowly assembling pieces of oddly disjointed memory in his head, Tony said, “Sometime in the future, Kang tried to defeat Ultron. But he kept failing and going back to try again – pulling powerful people out of time to help him, over and over—, eventually causing a cyclical temporal rupture that began to resonate…” He paused. Re-thought his phrasing after noticing the way the others were staring back at him in wide-eyed confusion, their faces blank. “Okay. Basic version? He broke time and it was looping around the break, causing problems that spread all throughout time. It’s fixed now – I hope – and the only reason any of you remember it at all is because you were standing right here next to me when I stopped it from happening in the first place.”

Spider-Man snorted, jerked a thumb at Noh-Varr. “So if you fixed it, why is the Protector here when he wasn’t before?”

Tony waved an armored hand impatiently toward Noh-Varr too where the Kree stood watching him uneasily. “Because, in a few more hours, we asked him to join the Avengers and make us a time machine which we then used to _travel through time_ , and you obviously remember some of that because you called him ‘the Protector’ and not ‘Marvel Boy’.” Okay, that one sounded confusing even to him, but he was still trying to let the fading memories of death and clawing feelings of guilt and loss that weren’t entirely his own settle in his head. He wasn’t in his best lecture mode.

Spider-Man gaped at him from behind his mask. It was obvious he was being overdramatic, because the mask stretched with his hanging jaw. Logan snorted. Clint looked angrily baffled. Spider-Woman shifted uncertainly on her feet. While Maria Hill glared and Thor wore a puzzled frown. Steve, though, stayed silent and continued to hold on to the unconscious Bucky, but his gaze stayed locked on Tony, his expression oddly drawn.

Tony let out a heavy sigh that echoed in his helmet and tried again. “Obviously, I’ve time-traveled. A few of you have too. Logan. Noh-Varr. Barnes,” Tony said, trying to keep his gaze from bouncing back to Steve again – just to be sure, to make certain –, and tried to calm the sick throbbing of his own pulse. He looked over at Logan instead, who nodded reluctantly, at Noh-Varr who was still staring at him in appalled silence, and then down at Barnes again. “But for some reason we came back before it really got started.”

“I time-traveled too,” Steve announced, and Tony’s gaze snapped back to him in shock. Steve sought his gaze through the HUD, catching it with uncanny precision. Tony was briefly stunned by the look of sheer pain in Steve’s eyes.

“I don’t remember that,” Tony all but whispered, dread stirring inside him.

“You wouldn’t,” Steve said somberly but didn’t elaborate.

“Oh. I see,” said Noh-Varr suddenly into the short silence even as Bucky Barnes let out a soft groan from the ground.

~*~

“Next stop: our apocalyptic future,” Tony announced with forced cheerfulness. Light flared brightly, blinding the three of them, and then all was darkness. His HUD snowed. Flickered. Rebooted. He waited, frozen, entombed in his suit for an instant until it surged back to life. And then every sensor he had told him he wasn’t where he had been only seconds ago.

“Where are we?” Barnes asked, tense, his voice hollow in Tony’s ears as the suit’s audio sensors stabilized. From somewhere in the distance came a deep roaring sound and the ground shook. As if they were standing close to a massive waterfall. But he couldn’t detect any nearby water.

“Cave. Central Park,” Logan replied shortly.

“That isn’t where we were before,” Bucky said, his tone doubting. “How did that happen?”

“This is a time-space transfer device, Mister Barnes. It takes us when and where the coordinates designate,” Noh-Varr explained calmly. “All time machines are, or you would be left adrift to die in space on the orbital path of the planet whenever you used one.”

“Charming thought,” Bucky muttered.

“And now you know one reason why I don’t have one of these babies just lying around my lab,” Tony said dryly, then took a steadying breath and switched on his chest-arc at minimal power, limiting it to the visible spectrum. “This should help.” 

“See?” Logan said to Barnes as mixed stone and dirt walls and a rough-cut rock floor were revealed by the glow.

“That’s some good nose, Wolverine,” Barnes said wryly.

“It’s what I do.” But in the light Logan looked tense. Almost bristling. And Tony felt the hair on the back of his neck rising too. It wasn’t water they were hearing. His HUD was settling as readings came in. But it still seemed unreliable. Because it was saying – he scanned further, pulse jumping sharply then racing with horror – there was energy… _far_ too much energy _… oh god, those readings were impossible…_ flying around somewhere. _Close._ Much too close.

Bucky Barnes snorted, turned to stare narrowly at Tony and Noh-Varr. “So did we make it? Are we in the future?”  His head swiveled back as Logan paced past him, following the slope of ground upwards toward what had to be the entrance to this cave-tunnel. “Is this where we’re supposed to be?”

“We’ll find out in a minute, Buck,” Tony said tightly, watching Logan. Noh-Varr stood stiffly beside him, what Tony could see of his face under his helmet looked grim. He had his own sensors too. Only Barnes couldn’t tell that something terrible – and potentially world-destroying – was going on nearby.

“We made it to the exact coordinates you set, Mister Stark,” the young Kree soldier said, still with the excessive politeness. It was enough to make Tony’s teeth ache in his head, but he let it pass.

“Hey, listen,” Tony said quickly, fighting back the touch of bile that tried to crawl up his throat at the thought of going out that tunnel entrance. But he forced himself to start walking. To follow Logan up the slight slope toward what lay beyond. “We’re going to see things that are going to _rattle_ us. We’re going to see a future that we have to assume is the _worst_ version of the future we have coming to us. Plus, we have no idea how real or damaged it is. We’re going to see friends and family either gone or… in a bad way. I need you guys to be able to hold it together no matter _what_ we see.”

He was talking to himself. For himself. He knew it. But the words spilled out of his mouth anyway. There was more sound from outside now. A roaring, blasting wave of it. Almost physical in its intensity. Far louder than a waterfall. The tunnel bent, turning a few more times on its way to the surface. Until light was spilling in. He shut off his chest arc. Logan had already disappeared around the final turn. Tony was tracking his progress on his HUD. Noted when he stopped abruptly.

“You mean somethin’ like this?” Logan shouted back.

Tony followed him around the corner, Noh-Varr and Barnes right on his heels. Came to a stop too, gaping out at the absolute hell of carnage and destruction raging just beyond.

“Yeah… just like that,” Tony said, horrified.

~*~

“Bucky!” Steve said in relief, bending over his friend to put a hand on his neck, testing his pulse as he stirred. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like shit,” Barnes said, his voice rasping and weak, his right hand shifting over slowly, awkwardly to clutch at the left side of his chest beneath his arm. “The hell happened?” Between them, Thor and Steve helped him sit. Barnes leaned heavily against Steve’s shoulder even after he was upright, his face pale under the cowl, his cybernetic arm lying lax at his side. Tony stared down at his arm then in horror.

 _A cybernetic arm that was controlled through an implant in his brain_. He, Tony, wasn’t the only vulnerable one around with his cyber-organic suit. Banner— his future self— Barnes had been with them in a time-line that held an Ultron triumphant over the entire world and _they’d forgotten about his arm_.

“Logan! Noh! It’s in his arm! We brought Ultron back!” Tony shouted, raising his hands, repulsors already charging in his palms. Logan instantly extended all his claws with a wet _snikt_ , crouching low, lips curling into a snarl. The Protector’s helmet snapped into place, the Kree soldier lifting his hands into a combat pose with trained speed. Bucky stiffened and tried to reach for his weapon even propped up in Steve and Thor’s steadying hold.

“Stop, Avengers!” Steve shouted, sweeping the three of them with a commanding stare that held them all back for a precious instant. An instant, Tony knew, that Ultron could be using to escape... but he held his fire too, heartsick and torn; Steve was in the way.

“Stop, Tony. I already destroyed the virus. _You_ gave me something to stop it before Ultron could take him over.” He reached over and lifted Bucky’s metal arm. On the inside of the elbow, a small blinking device was clamped. Tony stared down at the thing blankly. Yes, it certainly looked like something he might make – crude and rough, as if he’d been in a hurry, crossed with more than a few touches of Kree tech, but still his style. But he didn’t recognize the actual unit. “And now I need you to fix his arm so it can’t happen again.”

Tony let his repulsors power down. Lowered his hands. While his mind churned. His gut ached. Ultron triumphant. That impossibly strong Ultron of their darkest future. And they’d almost released him into _this_ time. He closed his eyes briefly behind his helmet. Opened them again when Noh-Varr spoke.

“Commander, even if your information is correct, I should not be in New York at this point in the time-stream. I am needed to stop an attack on the Naval Air Station in Georgia,” the Protector said calmly, lowering his hands too.

“You still have time to get there, Protector. We’ll make certain of it.” Steve’s gaze was on Tony again. Heavy. Intent. “You… your future self, Tony, you made sure we’d all end up here and now. You said it was critical. Because of this.” He pointed at the thing on Bucky’s arm.

“He could be right, Protector,” Tony said, his heart thumping painfully in his chest as possibilities swirled through his mind. Calculations. Theories. Potential errors. He’d debated this kind of thing with Reed often enough, the probability that loops of time could form pockets, isolate themselves, break through… oh god, what if things had changed that much? He sucked in a sharp breath and forced back the panic firmly. He’d find out. Soon. But not now. Not with all the Avengers watching.

“Is anyone ever going to explain to the rest of us just what the hell happened here right now?” Clint demanded, throwing his arms wide in frustration. “Because I’m more than a little lost in all the time-travel mumbo jumbo talk going on here.”

“I thought I did,” Tony said. He looked around the rooftop, sighed in dismay when most of the others shook their heads at him firmly. “Hell I was there for most o’ it an’ it still don’t make any sense,” Logan said gruffly. “Not that it matters now.” Tony grimaced, took a steadying breath. “I can give it another shot for the rest of the class, I guess.” He looked back at where Kang had landed when Thor blasted him onto this roof and found the damage superficial. Less money for the Foundation to shell out. “We probably shouldn’t hang around here, though.”

“But will anyone know exactly what the fuck it is you’re talking about when you do explain it, Stark?” Maria Hill said in disgust. Noh Varr opened his mouth to speak and she leveled a finger at him. “Just shut it, Alien Boy. Okay, Avengers, let’s move out. Back to the Tower.”

Noh-Varr closed his mouth and, wisely, said nothing.

~*~

This might be the end of the world, Tony thought with an ache in his throat, but at least he faced it with Steve. They sat beside each other in silence in the dim half-light of a dusty stairwell, shoulders touching. Steve had his forearms braced on his raised knees, his head tilted back against the wall, his eyes closed as the tried to rest and gather his strength for what was still to come. He was frowning slightly. Tony sat in a similar pose, but with his head turned to the side, unashamedly staring at Steve. 

They were in the roof-access stairwell of the building where the Avengers had first encountered Kang less than a day ago. Or rather, where Thor’s defensive reaction had thrown him out of the Tower. It was the last place where they had all been together as a team. And when all of them had been alive.

It would be the site of their salvation now. He hoped.

This wasn’t the way he normally faced the end of the world, Tony knew. Normally he raged. Shook his fists metaphorically – and sometimes literally – at the sky. Plotted and schemed and planned and ran around digging through impossibilities until he found the loop-hole, the delay, the trick, and worked out a way for them all to escape it. To survive. But not now. Not at this moment. All the plotting had been done. The plan was made. Their course set. Only… he couldn’t execute any of it. It fell first to Noh-Varr with his intimate knowledge of the Kree-developed time-space device he’d designed and built. And then it would fall to Steve to carry their plan through.

Tony could only wait on the sidelines. For once. Though he still had one last move to make in this game... once Steve was safe on the far side of time.

So his armor was shut down for now. Hiding in his bones until the last possible moment to give Ultron one less way to detect them. To keep him from finding them and stopping them before they could carry through with their desperate plan to fix the space-time continuum. He kept his eyes on Steve now, devouring him with his gaze, not wanting to miss even a single moment of the time spent with him during what could very likely be the last half hour of their lives.

Steve finally opened his eyes. Let his head roll slowly to the side until he faced Tony, his blue, blue gaze startlingly calm.

“Are you sure this plan will work?” Steve asked softly, voice pitched low enough not to attract the attention of Noh-Varr where he sat on the landing of the cramped stairwell just below them, laboring to make the critical software adjustments and setting modifications to his time-device with inadequate tools and only a desperate, reckless theory to guide him. With Reed escaped to another dimension with his children, it was the best they could hope to do. They hadn’t had time to draw him into their causal loop anyway – Ultron had made certain of that. But once Tony had convinced him it was the only way, Noh had said he could do the calculations. And make the fundamental alterations to his device that seemed to somehow offend him. All they could do now was wait and let him do his thing.

“Pretty sure,” Tony answered just as quietly. “The math is sound, but that doesn’t make the variables easier to anticipate or programming it for something it’s been designed specifically _not_ to do go smoothly. But… if anyone can do it, Noh can.”

“Good,” Steve’s eyes flared slightly with something Tony didn’t want examine too closely. Surprise? Pride? Relief? Steve turned over his far hand, revealing the device that held all their hopes in his palm. “This too?”

“Now that _will_ work,” Tony said grimly, staring at the ugly little device in Steve’s hand intently. It was the bastard spawn of future-Tony’s brilliant defensive code, his own power-management tech and Noh’s Kree hardware. “I used the first version already on that bit of Ultron’s code that got into your hard-light shield, remember? It’ll kill him dead in the arm before he can react.”

“And save Bucky,” Steve murmured, still anguished over the fate of his friend.

“And save all of us too,” Tony said, fighting back the familiar guilt. He should have realized sooner. Not let his own shut-down by his future self distract him. Steve’s gaze roamed over Tony’s face as he nodded. But despite the thoughts racing through his own mind, he didn’t even try to stop himself from leaning closer and pressing his mouth to Steve’s or lifting a hand to cup the back of his neck and draw him closer. The kiss they shared was gentle, aching, chaste.

“God, I wish I hadn’t waited so long,” Tony said against his mouth with a soft sigh when they finally drew apart for breath. Steve’s eyes were heavy-lidded, warm for the moment, fixed on his. “It’s hard to even remember why I did now. All those years I wasted…”

“Don’t,” Steve said as he shifted. Slid his arm around Tony’s shoulders and drew him close against his side. Tony leaned in shamelessly, more than half tempted to crawl into his lap. “No regrets, Tony, we have now. And when this works we’ll have… yesterday. And then a better today all over again.” Steve tried a wry smile, but even that fell short of his eyes, heavy again with strain and grief. So many friends lost, so quickly. It was still hard to absorb. Carol. Thor. Sue. They were still out there, Tony knew. Fighting Ultron. Possibly dying even as the three of them sat here, in relative peace. But those three were being the distraction they needed while Noh did what he could to possibly set the entire time-line to rights again. To erase all this – disaster – and restore the time-line that _should have_ been. Tony swallowed hard, his throat tight with grief as terrible images threatened to overwhelm him. All the other Avengers so horribly dead. So many other heroes too. Ultron… Kang… they both had so much to pay for. And Tony _would_ make them pay. The dark-matter device in his pocket would ensure that.

“I love you, Steve Rogers,” Tony said, the words falling from his lips easily now. Now that he was doomed. “I wish I’d remember how easy it is to say that when you go back.”

Steve’s mouth curved into an achingly tender smile that stayed this time. “I’ll remind you,” he promised softly, leaning in to kiss Tony again. And this one wasn’t chaste at all. It was hard and driving and possessive and Tony reveled in it as he snaked his arm around Steve’s neck and pressed himself close.

It took the sound of a deliberately cleared throat – twice – to break them apart. Steve drew away first, while Tony panted, his mouth wet and swollen, glancing back over his shoulder at Noh with a scowl.

“My apologies. But the time-sequence is ready,” Noh-Varr said diffidently, raising the time-device with both hands. The make-shift bandages wound around his ribs were stained with blood, but he stood up straight, his eyes clear and determined. Ultron had come for him the hardest, still partially vulnerable to Kree technology. Tony had been shadowing him, protecting him ever since they realized it. That vulnerability was why they still had any hope at all left now.

Steve’s arm tightened around Tony’s shoulders in a lingering hug for a moment before he lifted it away. Tony pulled back, let him stand first. Then Steve offered him a hand and he took it, climbing to his own feet slowly, still aching from hours of desperate combat on the run. He stood beside Steve, leaning against him, sliding an arm around his waist. Not even pretending to be aloof anymore. Steve’s arm slid around his back without hesitation too, sending a wave of relief and contentment through him.

“We will have to be outside on the roof, in the same location as before, in order to set up the correct resonance sequence,” Noh-Varr said, his expression impassive, his gaze flickering between them without comment.

“Not from in here? We’ll be exposed,” Steve said with a concerned frown, his gaze darting to Tony who nodded grimly to confirm Noh’s words. Outside was Ultron’s domain. How distracted he still was depended on their three friends’ survival.

“Both time-jumps will be instantaneous,” Noh-Varr said, his voice steady but low. “You will go to that same point where we departed the future for the last time, and your presence will deflect the path through space-time enough for the combination of physical presence and the programmed destination point of my device in this time to override the settings of the one in the future and destroy it.”

“You’ll draw yourself here, basically,” Tony added, forcing himself to move away from Steve’s arm. They had to get ready. It was nearly time. “Along with everyone else who originally belonged to that time-stream; me, Noh, Logan and… Bucky.” Steve nodded in understanding, his mouth held in a tight line.

Tony closed his eyes, swallowed against the taste of ash in his mouth. From the thick pall in the air. From the city that burned around them, nearly all of her heroes destroyed. Steve had tried to warn off the rest of the world. To tell them to abandon New York, regroup, and strike at Ultron hard, as one united force. It was the world’s only hope if this ploy of theirs failed – even though Tony knew it would most likely be useless. But they had no idea if the message had even been received by anyone beyond the city. Ultron already controlled nearly everything electronic. Except for Noh’s suit and Tony’s own.

“You’ll have to be quick to get that onto Bucky’s arm, but not _too_ quick,” Tony said, gesturing to the crab-like device in Steve’s hand. “It has to be done here, in that time. We don’t know if Ultron-of-the-future actually let himself be completely destroyed or if he was just hiding out somewhere then and biding his time. So it has to be done _yesterday_ , where we were certain he didn’t exist yet at all.”

Beside him, Steve looked determined. “I understand. I hope it works that way.”

“It has to, or this will be our future for certain.” Tony went on before Noh-Varr could. “You _have_ to surprise him, Steve. Bucky can’t see you coming. None of us can. Or Ultron will figure it out and react.”

“I know what’s riding on this. I’ll make it happen,” Steve said firmly, holding Tony’s gaze a moment longer as his softened fractionally again. “I love you too, Tony. I should have said it before, but I wanted you to know… before I go.”

“D-damn it, Steve, your timing….” Tony swallowed hard. His eyes blurred as he held Steve’s gaze, reading the truth there like a blow. _He meant it._ Impossible elation surged through him for a heady moment, only to crash instantly into despair. This would all be wiped away soon enough – one way or another. He blinked the wetness of his eyes away firmly, fought through the breath lodged in his throat, ignored the way his heart thundered wildly in his chest.

“Oh hell, please, make this count for something on the karmic scale at least,” he managed to say, his voice raw, shaking.

Then he staggered back before Steve could respond, armoring up. His HUD snapped into place before his eyes. Warnings and devastation flared across it, red, red, red, from the world beyond. He put his armored hand on the door to the roof behind him even as he struggled to force more words out of his mouth.

“Okay, it’s time for you to go save us all.”

~*~

“You did it!” his older self said as soon as they materialized out of the flare of light. He was grinning broadly, his lined face lit up in relief. Tony stared at him from behind his helmet, frowning in exhaustion. He’d seen far too many different versions of himself lately, he thought grimly. It was getting… tiring.

“Did we?” Bucky said doubtfully.

“Two days ago, Kang took out Ultron,” his older self confirmed, beaming. Behind him Banner was nodding, stroking his white beard, a broad smile on his face, while the cluster of kids beyond looked marginally less sullen and grim now too… but still not quite as relieved as he’d expected. But maybe it hadn’t quite sunk into them yet, he mused wearily. They’d grown up with Ultron ruling this destroyed world, after all.

“And then?” Logan asked.

“Nothing. Kang up and left,” older-him said, still smiling. Beyond him, kneeling at Banner’s feet, Immortus spoke.

“Thank you,” he said, head bowed low, apparently humbled in every way. Tony watched him darkly. Saw the hint of tension still in his back. Given the blood-thirsty nature of the kids standing beyond him, he didn’t blame him for being worried. Much.

“THANK YOU?!” Banner thundered, glowering down at Immortus from his stone chair. “You almost break the world, we clean it up, and all you can muster is a weak little _thank you_?!” He slammed his big green hands down on the arms of the carved stone seat, breaking off chunks. “Will you do us all a favor and go back to wherever you came from and _die of old age_?!”

The young woman with spider-powers who was never far from Banner tittered with glee. “Ha!” she said, pointing at Immortus and sneering. “Ha! He told you he was smartest!”

His older self came to his side. “Come with me, Tony,” he said gravely, already walking away from the taunting going on behind them. Tony followed him in wary silence. “When you get back to your time, I need you to do a favor for me…”

“Of course,” Tony said.

“I need you to be ready. Ultron is coming, no matter what.” He pressed a small egg-shaped device into Tony’s armored hand as Tony stared at it in horror. “And you need to be ready too. _No matter what_.”

~*~

The non-flyers took the four sleds back to the Tower. Maria Hill flew one for Steve, who was holding up the still-groggy Bucky, an arm tight around his waist, Bucky’s real arm draped over his shoulder to hold him steady. Spider-Man took the leftover one, sending it into loops and whooping gleefully the while. Tony paced Steve’s sled in the Iron Man, keeping an eye on Barnes warily.

Tony wasn’t sure if the device ‘he’ had built was keeping an uncompressed Ultron subdued or had already destroyed whatever subroutine version of itself Ultron had planted in Bucky’s arm controls. He’d need to take a much closer look at it in his lab first to find that out. Which was going to be risky. Letting even a truncated portion of Ultron into the Tower’s systems could doom them all.

It was an unusually silent group of Avengers who landed on the roof of the Tower, minus Thor. He’d detoured straight into the hole blown in the conference room windows to check on Jarvis.

“You know, ever since Iron Man did his time-whammy, my spider-sense hasn’t been quite going off, but it’s definitely poking me,” Spider-Man said after leaving his sled in the hangar and cart-wheeling out to end up clinging to the wall by the elevator, head up for once. “There was a guy we met during that— that time we haven’t actually got to yet. I think he might still be around. Or around again. Or something.”

“The dinosaur guy,” Jessica Drew agreed, landing gracefully beside her fellow spider-person. “Carried a sword. Really tanned and ripped and wearing pretty much nothing but some really tight, low-cut pants?”

“Yeeee-ah, him. Mr. Renn-Faire Reject,” Spider Man said, dragging the first word out and looking at Jessica sidelong for her rather – particular – description. She grinned back at him unrepentantly. “Killraven. I first met him years back… but he said it had only been a few weeks for him. I’m wondering if he’s part of this time-loopy business too then, and that’s why my spider-sense isn’t quite calming down.”

“Killraven? I don’t know anything about him.” Tony frowned grimly and flipped the face-plate of his helmet up instead of retracting it, so the armor’s full HUD would remain active. “Or, your spider sense could still be reacting to the piece of Ultron hiding out in Barnes’ arm.”

“Whoa! Didn’t that kill it? Isn’t that what Cap said that doohickey he stuck on there did?” Spider-Man shuddered elaborately and held out both hands, pointer fingers making a cross toward where Steve was helping Bucky out of the hanger. Steve had slung the shield over his own back to carry it for Bucky and for a moment Tony was consumed by a wave of nostalgia that echoed oddly into the future memories too.

“The device was supposed to wipe out Ultron’s fragment completely,” Steve confirmed with a frown, staring at Tony with something unnamable in his eyes that made him ache with longing.

~*~

“Are you here to challenge me?” the rasping mechanical voice demanded. Tony glared through his HUD at the back of the far-too-familiar silver form standing atop the crushed remains of what had once been an entire block of apartments, his systems already flashing warnings of intrusion attempts. The patches made by his older self held. Barely. He set all his processing systems to deep rotating encryption, random scramble, and fought back a rare impulse to pray. But the only god he knew and trusted was years away, fighting the detritus of time, and not able to help him here anyway...

“No,” Tony said firmly.

“Then for what purpose have you come to me?” Ultron demanded, slowly turning his head until the red flaring lines of his vaguely humanoid face were visible to them all. Power and presence flowed from the robotic form. Always more than merely a machine, Ultron nearly glowed now. Beside him Barnes sucked in a shocked breath, and Tony realized he’d had no idea what they were truly facing— until now.

“We came to ask you a favor,” Tony said, lifting his chin and taking a step forward. Ultron turned around then with great deliberation – an affectation, a pretense, just toying with them, it could be any and all of them, Tony knew – and bent his head toward him slightly.

“That is interesting,” Ultron said. “What sort of favor could you ask of Ultron, Tony Stark?” His hands hung beside his humanoid hips, slack and open. He didn’t need to posture. And he knew it. Tony knew it too, with the dread certainty of the shattered city, the decaying bodies of heroes – friends – still lying in the rubble around them. Ultron considered them now with remote curiosity. Like an insect that had crawled across his foot. “What sort of favor would benefit the one who has so far evaded me to expose himself and yet not attempt harm to me?”

Logan shifted beside him, claws already out, his body taut with barely restrained aggression. “I’m not him. We’ve traveled here through time,” Tony said carefully.

“For what purpose,” Ultron demanded.

“A time-traveler known as Kang…”

Ultron interrupted him. “The Conqueror.”

“Yes.”

“Also known as Immortus and the Pharaoh Rama-Tut.”

“You know of him.” Then Tony cursed himself inwardly for the blatant stupidity of his response. Of course Ultron knew Kang. He’d long ago absorbed the Avengers entire database. Hank had created him for Christ’s sake. Ultron knew most of their old enemies as well as they did. Just as he knew most of the Avengers weaknesses.

“Yes,” was all Ultron said now.

“Okay, well, Kang is going to come here and you will go to war with him,” Tony said, trying to recover his poise as best he could. The intrusion attempts against his armor had finally stopped. Which didn’t make him any less wary in the slightest.

“Why will Kang come here to war with me?” Ultron asked shifting one foot forward slightly as if adjusting his stance, moving for the first time since he turned to face them and making Wolverine burst out with a snarl beside him.

“Because his ego is titanic,” Tony spat, blood surging in his veins, heart thundering, breath catching at the useless fury of it all. “Because he’s an arrogant, reckless _fool_.” Behind him he could hear Barnes sucking in heavy breaths. Trying to keep himself calm. Logan was muttering curses under his breath now. Only the Protector was silent and still. Too still. As if afraid to draw attention to himself.

“When will he arrive to challenge me?” Ultron asked after a moment of chilling silence.

“I don’t know,” Tony said through gritted teeth.

“Your lack of detail would suggest a human lie,” Ultron said evenly. “While your vital signs, though appropriately elevated due to the physical danger you are in within my presence, indicate that you are telling the truth as you know it.”

Ultron’s head turned slightly then. His triangular optical ports seemed to fix on Wolverine. “I have already destroyed you, mutant Wolverine, yet here you stand. Your adamantium claws are useless against the alloy of my upgraded shell – if you even lived long enough to find a weak spot, all you would do is minimally delay my retribution upon you.”

Logan growled low in his throat. Didn’t relax his battle-ready stance at all. “Then don’t worry ‘bout it.”

Ultron turned away from him as if he didn’t matter, back to Tony. “His presence lends weight and validity to your claims Tony Stark.”

Tony shuddered inside his suit, fought the terror eating at his gut. “We’ve seen the war. We don’t know exactly when it starts, but it happens right here. Everything burns. The entire Earth.”

Kang and a thousand warriors out of time hadn’t been able to destroy this Ultron, Tony knew. His blood pounded in his ears sickeningly with spiraling fear.

Ultron didn’t laugh, or nod or do anything different, but Tony could still sense something like pleasure from him. “Varying calculations of such a confrontation indicate a victory for me.”

“Yes,” Tony said flatly.

Ultron was silent again for a long moment. “Then I thank you for the fair warning.”

“We need you to let Kang win,” Tony blurted out, heart thundering in his chest. He could hear the others shift uneasily behind him, readying for battle.

Ultron was silent again for another long moment, the blank triangular eye ports fixed directly on him now.

“Then I am to assume the fallout of this war will cause catastrophic damage to the space-time continuum as Kang abuses his power over it in his attempt to overthrow me.”

“He breaks it completely.” Tony said harshly. “It’s already happened… and it’s causing ripple effects up and down the time-stream.”

“And by doing so, the fabric of our reality begins to unravel.”

“Yes,” Tony said, mouth dry, hands fisted and cramping in his armored gauntlets at his side.

Bucky spoke for the first time, his tone cold, precise as he repeated the words Tony’s older self had used. “We’re standing in the center of the time-storm hurricane.”

“Not much to rule over if there ain’t nothin’ left,” Logan added, teeth bared, claws still extended.

Ultron didn’t turn away or acknowledge them at all, his gaze fixed on Tony. “You will prove this to me.”

“I have limited means to travel through time but I will take you,” Noh-Varr said suddenly, stepping up on Tony’s far side. “I will show you what you need to know.”

“You are Kree.” Ultron’s attention shifted to the Protector then, dire and steady. “Interesting. I will travel to the time of battle to see for myself. Give me your device.”

“No,” Tony said, even as Noh-Varr made to step ahead of him. He slammed an arm out in front of him as insurance, but the boy came to an obedient halt anyway.

“Then this is a trap,” Ultron said and his hand lifted with blinding speed – Barnes shouted a warning, Logan yelled, Tony flung up his hands – and everything around them disappeared into a searing blast of screaming, ravening energy.

“Kree technology,” Ultron said when the blast faded leaving them standing unharmed behind the safety of Noh-Varr’s energy dome backed up by Tony’s own repulsor shield.

“We came prepared,” Tony said, fighting to keep his voice steady as his blood pumped with left-over adrenaline. He held his hands high before him, projected repulsor shield firmly in place now that Ultron had shown his hand. “We’re desperate, not stupid. We’re not here to fight you either. But to prove this isn’t a trap, we’ll leave now and let you judge for yourself when Kang comes.” He nodded at the Protector, who dropped his own defensive dome in order to bring up the time-device. The boy nodded his readiness after only a moment. Tony focused on the ominously still silver form again, teeth gritted behind his helmet. “Don’t let this particular war happen, Ultron. Lose it. Because if you fight Kang here, we all lose. Everyone. Throughout time. Even you.”

And with another nod to the Protector and a flash of light, they were gone.

~*~

“Here’s to Alien Boy!” Logan said, lifting his beer can to his mouth and taking a hard pull off it. Beside him Barnes shook his head. Tony sat away from the rest of the celebrations. Stared out the window of yet another Avengers Tower conference room where they had gathered after returning from that shattered future. The rest of the team was there now too, talking about all the weird things they’d seen rampaging through out Manhattan during the fractured-time loops.

“Call him by his name,” Barnes insisted, mouth twisting in a wry smile as he lifted his own drink in his metal hand in a salute. It looked like a beer too.

“I thought that was his name,” Logan shot back, grinning toothily. “What’s your name again, kid?”

“Noh-Varr,” Noh-Varr replied calmly, holding the beer can someone had shoved into his hand gingerly.

Tony kept his own armored hand closed around the object in his palm. It wasn’t a beverage. It was small. Egg-shaped. And filled with just as much disaster as if he’d been holding a beer in his hand.

“To Noh-Varr!” Thor boomed, lifting his mug of something very foamy up high. Tony could see them all gathered behind him in the reflections off the windows. Joking. Celebrating. He noticed Bucky set his beer down with a frown. How he rubbed at his left shoulder.

Maria Hill shifted on her feet. “I just talked to Steve Rogers.” Tony flinched guiltily, kept his hand closed protectively over the thing hidden in it. “Killraven is safe and secure… and the man says he wants you on board, Noh-Varr.”  He caught a glimpse of Noh-Varr straightening to attention in the window. “If you want to be an Avenger, you’re an Avenger,” she finished.

“Really?” Noh-Varr said, his tone breaking slightly. Bucky turned away.

Spider-Man laughed from where he sat on the window, feet below him, butt-to-glass, his mask tugged up to reveal his mouth. The kid was smiling. He had a nice smile, Tony noted from the corner of his eye. Wide and honest. “There’s no money, but—.”

“You get all the crazy people trying to kill you you could ever want,” Clint finished, chuckling as he toasted them all with his own drink.

“Exactly,” Jessica added as Bucky turned away from the group, rubbing at his forehead now. Tony saw Thor turn slightly and frown after him.

“So, whose kids did you meet? Who were these little Avengers?” Spider-Man asked eagerly.

Logan snorted. Took a long pull on his beer. “No more future talk,” he said after a soft belch. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Nice. Hey, he just wants to know if he ever gets a girl,” Jessica said.

“I get girls,” Spider-Man muttered defensively.  Everyone ignored him. Tony turned his head, following Bucky vaguely with his gaze now too. Watched him stagger slightly as he reached the door, brace himself against the doorframe with his right arm. His left was hanging slack at his side. Thor was watching him openly now too, a puzzled look on his face.

“Does something ail thee, friend?” Thor asked him, taking a step closer.

“Come on… what did you see out there?” Jessica insisted, leaning closer to Logan and almost elbowing him.

“I get girls!” Spider-Man insisted over the top of her question, more loudly this time.

“Don’t worry about it,” Logan said his head snapping up now too. “Just worry about today… the hell is wrong with you Barnes?” Tony turned all the way around, his focus snapping back from dire thoughts of the future to the here-and-now in a rush.

Thor was to him now. Reaching a hand toward Bucky’s blue-clad shoulder. But before he could touch him Bucky crumpled to his knees, his metal arm hanging limp at his side, his flesh hand grabbing his head in something like pain.

“D-don’t know… arm hurts… headache… god… m’ head’s splitting…”

His metal arm lifted. Reached back and grabbed the shield slung on his back. Bucky screamed, a terrible rising wail of ultimate agony. Then before their eyes familiar red ropes of energy poured out of his metal arm and _dissolved_ Captain America’s shield.

Tony was on his feet in a rush, eyes wide in terror, mouth gaping.

Not dissolved. _Absorbed_.

“Get away from him!” Tony shouted even as Thor tried to grab Barnes, maybe thinking to help him even now --  even as the silver arm at his side _rippled_ and changed, and with a sharp crackle of power, emitted a tremendous blast of force. In an instant, Thor was blown away at high speed, blasted out through the outer wall and the window by that shattering, thundering wave of power.

The rest of the Avengers were shouting, scrambling to defend, to regroup, to reach weapons set aside in the safety of the Tower. The helmet rippled into place over his face between one breath and the next, HUD blaring warnings. Tony lifted his hands and blasted the thing that had once been Bucky Barnes with every hastily gathered erg of power in his suit. Saw the energy split harmlessly by the raised silver arm only to blast through the walls – slice across the entire floor – beyond instead. Saw Bucky’s head turn toward him, still clad in Captain America’s cowl, but with eyes that burned with red from within now. Thin lines of metal were bursting out from beneath Barnes’ flesh even as Tony stared back at him in horror, spreading up from the arm, augmented by the absorbed shield and piercing deeper into Bucky’s body. Taking him over. Converting him.

Snarling, Logan launched himself at what had once been their teammate, claws extended. Rebounded off an impenetrable energy shield and fell to the ground at his feet, briefly stunned.

“Thank you for bringing me back to this time and this place, Tony Stark,” Ultron said with the shattered remnants of Bucky’s voice, laughing openly now as he stared across the room at him. “Now I can enjoy destroying my creator and the Avengers _all over again!_ ”

“Noh! Everyone! Run! Get out of here! _NOW, AVENGERS!_ ” And without another thought, Tony grabbed Clint, shoved Maria toward Noh, turned and launched himself and Clint through the shattered hole in the side of the Tower and out into the doomed New York sky beyond.

 _Steve_ , was all he could think. Desperately. Frantically. They had to warn Steve.

~*~

“I’ll need to verify Ultron’s actually gone before I try to reboot his arm. In my lab,” Tony said, watching Bucky’s arm warily for signs of impending sentience. But it appeared completely inert, hanging like a dead weight off Bucky’s shoulder joint. Which had to be painful, but he was enduring it stoically. “Better support that weight before it does him muscle damage, Steve,” Tony added as casually as he could, moving closer to them both, a hand extending to help.

Bucky lifted his head with some difficulty and glared him back until Tony let his hand fall. “So I have you to thank for a useless deadweight of an arm, Stark?”

“Better that than getting turned into a vessel of Ultron,” Tony shot back, tilting his chin up slightly.

“It was necessary. And I’m the one who deactivated it, Buck,” Steve said quietly, his expression strained. “Don’t blame Tony.”

Barnes just bared his teeth at Tony in nothing like a smile. “Stark’s tech; Stark’s fault.”

“Hey! Finger-pointing fun times aside, I really think we need to go look for that Killraven guy,” Spider-Man cut in waving an arm in the air dramatically. “If he was caught up in this before… maybe he’s still out there now. _With_ his T-Rex buddy who definitely isn’t purple and friendly. Or on a leash.”

“The T-Rex?” Maria Hill said with a grimace. “Didn’t that thing get blown up by those tripod-alien things— which aren’t here anymore.” Her face went stony for a moment as she absorbed her own words. Then she shook her head once, tightly. “Now we’re looking for time-traveling half-naked guys with swords and dinosaurs. Well, can’t say you didn’t warn me about the weird around here, Rogers. Okay, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye get down to… wasn’t that in Washington Square Park? Start there and take a look around for our lost barbarian boy and his pet. Not that a dinosaur is going to be hard to spot, but…”

“Hey, I still want to know what happened here!” Clint interrupted petulantly.”Someone’s going to explain it eventually, right?”

“Debrief later, Hawkeye. Potential dinosaur loose in Manhattan first. Get going,” she said, jerking a thumb back toward the rooftop hangar. Steve nodded at her too. “Best you go with them, Maria, for damage control,” he said. “We’ll take care of things here for now.”

“With your time-travel buddy squad, huh?” she said, giving him a piercing look that Steve accepted with a somber nod. “Okay, the rest of us will go handle any lingering messy clean-up from whatever _almost_ happened… for now.”

“Thank you, Maria,” Steve said, then turned Bucky toward the elevator. Noh-Varr stepped up beside them and grabbed Barnes’ metal arm by the elbow, bending it and lifting the weight of it up, taking pressure off his shoulder and side. Barnes moved with a little more ease then, shooting the Kree a grateful look.

Tony followed behind the three of them in brooding silence, Logan on his heels.

~*~

The message started to play as soon as Tony walked into the alternate lab, still armored up, the HUD active. 

“Hey, dick-boy.” Her voice came from the screen at the station where she’d been working on her armor. “You’re in the can, so I’m taking my chance and doing this now—“

“Message off!” he snapped out, following it with a command sent through the suit that shut that entire station down completely even as Logan let out a rumbling laugh.

“Not bad, Stark,” he said, leering and adding a low whistle. Just to be an ass. “Looks like you make a decent girl after all.” Holding on to his calm with some difficulty, Tony deliberately rolled his eyes at him.

“Antonia left you a message?” Steve said, glancing over Bucky’s bent head at Tony in surprise.

“Seems so,” Tony said grimly as he moved to his own station and started calling up extraneous systems and shutting them down, isolating them as best he could. The room beyond began to shift around a bit. It wasn’t as automated as his full lab in the basement was, but it at least had a set of benches near the sensor equipment that could be used as a temporary exam table. “Haven’t been back in this lab since then. I’ll play it later. We need to look at Barnes now. He shouldn’t still be this woozy just from turning off his arm. Put him on that table over there.” He pointed Logan and Steve to where the benches had locked into place.

“Just can’t get my balance,” Barnes said from between gritted teeth as the other two men helped him across the room. “What the hell did your robot-blasting thingy here do to me, Stark?”

“You do realize that arm’s controlled by implants _in your brain_ , don’t you? You’re lucky you’ve only lost your _balance_ ,” Tony said sharply. He shot Steve a grim look as he and Noh-Varr had to practically lift Barnes up onto the table. Bucky lay down flat with a groan, draping his flesh-and-blood right arm over his eyes after tugging the cowl of the uniform back off his head. “Might want to get McCoy headed up this way, Steve. I’m no doctor,” Tony warned.

“He’s at the Raft. I’ll call him in right away,” Steve said, turning away to do that after giving Bucky’s flesh shoulder a reassuring squeeze. Tony raised his brows but didn’t ask more. For some reason he’d thought Henry was still in Texas. Obviously he was wrong. Which was good for Bucky but a curious coincidence. He watched Steve move to the far side of the room.

Noh-Varr looked around the lab with a faintly disdainful look on his face.  “This is… surprisingly primitive.” 

“It’s just a temporary lab,” Tony shot back narrowly, annoyed despite himself as he turned on only what he figured he absolutely had to. He kept the suit HUD live, working through the opened faceplate for now. With a grimace he dropped the dead-block on the dedicated petabyte network pipe to the Baxter Building. He’d have to re-connect it again later himself, which was a long, awkward process down in the sewers; not to mention he’d just sent Reed a ‘things are bad here, brace yourself’ sign a mile high. “If you’re gonna be that way about it, Noh, go tell Thor where we are. If even a little bit of Ultron did manage to survive, his lightning is still the best first response to scramble it before that thing gets a strong foothold in these systems.”

“As you wish,” Noh-Varr said and exited the room. Tony turned back toward his sensor controls, battling his stung pride. He probably shouldn’t have snapped at the kid for that, but. Whatever. He was still twitchy from memories of his own death. He glanced at the settings, ready to make adjustments, but found they were already set at the appropriate levels for biological scans – left over from when he’d scanned his other-dimensional self. The future memories were starting to layer oddly into each other in his head, leaving jagged breaks, broken assumptions, lurking potentials; like the aftermath of her visit. With hopefully far less personal fallout this time. Grimly, he set the sensors to imaging Bucky now.

“Okay, Stark, what went wrong?” Logan asked, folding his arms over his chest and watching him narrowly from where he leaned against a tool chest near Bucky’s head.

“What wrong?” he shot back, trying to ready some potential code-blocks in case of disaster and not let himself be distracted by the way Steve was pacing deeper into the lab, apparently to keep his conversation with Henry private. “We’re here aren’t we?”

He looked down between his hands with determination. The sensors had already started to build a holographic view of Bucky’s head and upper body and the metal arm into his custom-designed render system and he fell silent, absorbing it. The arm was far more invasive than it appeared on the surface, of course. Internal joints and actuators were covered by a flexible honeycomb of metal beneath the smooth silver sheath from the shoulder cap on down to the fingertips – but then it had to be to give Bucky the full range of motion he had with it. The damn thing was strong too, giving him both grip and lifting power – which was due to a carbofiber monofilament mesh that ran all through Barnes’ actual muscles along his sides and back and neck, reinforcing and supporting the arm’s weight and actuators through his own musculoskeletal system.

There was an integrated biofeedback mechanism in there too, Tony noted, tracing the tiny filaments to the spine, with slightly wider bundles of carbofiber leading to nodes in the neck, and deeper into the center and right sides of his head where millimeter wide control bands sat. Those would be the vulnerable spots. Where Ultron could possibly still lurk. Though how the Soviets had managed such delicate surgery so long ago both impressed and horrified him. He didn’t recognize the work, but there had to have been someone truly _brilliant_ on the team back then. Still, Barnes was damn lucky the arm worked at all, much less that they hadn’t made him a complete vegetable while _getting_ it to work. Though Tony had heard he’d been virtually one until Steve restored his memories and full personality using a Cosmic Cube.

He dragged his attention away from the engineering miracle that was Bucky Barnes’ Cold War Soviet-era cybernetic arm reluctantly. Frowned at the more intricate details resolving on his HUD. “You were there, Logan. You know. We talked Ultron into letting Kang win. In order to keep the space-time continuum from shattering completely from his persistent replaying of that losing battle …”

“That’s not where it really ended, Stark. We went back to Banner and the kids, then you went off an’ had a little chat with the old-man you. There was a flash o’ light and then there we were back on that roof with Kang and a bunch o’ Avengers without a clue. So what went wrong?”

“I don’t know,” he said, shooting Logan a hard look. And he didn’t. Not for certain. In one vaguely blurry set of memories his older self pressed the intact dark matter device into his hand and told him to be ready for the coming of Ultron. No matter what. In another, his older self grabbed his shoulders, shook him, called him a blind fool and started to pass on an urgent message to, to Steve? only to have the blinding flash of light dump them back on that rooftop, with Immortus about to set the bait of potential offspring into the Avengers’ minds.

Only Tony had known he was lying about why they had to go, just to get them there. Because he’d already seen the truth of that fractured future that Kang-Immortus had wrought with his stubborn arrogance.

“Ya happen to notice that our Kree kid don’t have his time-gizmo anymore?”

Tony’s head jerked up and his eyes went wide. “God damn it, you’re right.” And he could kick himself for not noticing sooner. And he’d already sent Noh-Varr down to get Thor and couldn’t grill him about it just yet either.

“ _I_ wondered about that,” Barnes said from under his own arm on the table, adding in a rough snort.

“I don’t remember Rogers going with us either. Not any of those times,” Logan said, narrowing his eyes as he looked across the lab.

“The hell are you implying, Logan?” Barnes said in a sharp tone, lifting his arm away from his face to glare at him. Logan met his glare briefly, then shifted his frowning attention back to Steve.

“Just sayin’ is all. He wasn’t even here for most of that crap – so there had ta be a damn important reason why he took off inta the future later.”

Tony let his gaze be drawn over to Steve again too. Reluctantly. Because he didn’t want to get caught staring when the others were there, but he was unable to resist now. Steve was standing in profile by the far wall, his arms folded over his chest, feet planted shoulder-width apart, his head cocked slightly, with chin raised in the tilted listening pose he adopted whenever he was on a headset.

It was such a familiar pose… then Tony’s breath caught a little as a memory that wasn’t quite his own nearly overwhelmed him – from closer, of a slightly older Steve, deeper lines at the corners of his eyes the only way he could tell, once more in the Captain America uniform, without the cowl, and standing exactly the same way, except for the grip one hand had shot out to get on one of Tony’s own arms, keeping him from drawing away, a broad thumb stroking lightly over the pulse in Tony’s wrist before Steve brought it up to his mouth, kissed the beat of Tony’s blood gently, then shifted his grip until their fingers entwined, all without pausing his conversation.

Tony had to grip the sides of the workstation hard to keep the flood of pure want and longing warmth that filled him then from driving him to his knees. His head snapped back around with a jerk and he stared down at the fully layered display of Barnes’ shoulder joint beneath his trembling hands blindly.

And Tony did his best to shove those feelings back down as far as he could, to focus, because there was still risk here. But containing those feelings was like trying to pile up dry sand, futile and difficult. This was not the time or the place… as Steve had said… make the time… his thoughts whirled between dismay and triumph. But it had been— that memory had been in costume… would it be…? He made a harsh sound.

“Jesus, Stark. You okay over there?” Barnes asked into the sudden silence.

“Steve took it,” Tony said roughly, after a heartbeat spent trying to remember precisely what they’d been discussing before memory had struck, ignoring Bucky’s inquiry completely. “Noh’s device. He’s the Commander.” Tony’s mind turned back fully to the here and now. Away from the distracting hope that glimpse had given him. That they hadn’t reversed anything else. Why _would_ Steve need to time-travel? Because he’d already admitted he’d done it. Take control of the device to keep it out of other’s hands, sure, but why had he _used_ it?

Tony’s gaze snapped back to Bucky, lying flat on his benches, in the middle of the technologically advanced Tower, in horror. “No, he _had to_ take it _._ Because the first time we came back – when we were supposed to, the way the three of us remember it – _we actually did bring Ultron back with us_.”

“The hell you say,” Logan said on a snarl.

“That’s why Ultron agreed to give up so easily – to let Kang and his time-army finally defeat him,” Tony said, dread tightening his throat. Steve… what had he done in that lost half-day still ahead? Seen? Endured? “Ultron’d already hacked himself into Barnes’ arm. He’d beaten the Avengers – the whole world – once already in the future; why not let Kang help him to do it again? Ultron played us all.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” Steve voice said quietly, and the three of them looked up to find Commander Rogers standing close to the foot of the table where Bucky lay again. “Henry’ll be here as soon as he can clear Raft security,” he added for Tony’s benefit, his gaze lingering on him.

Tony straightened up slowly, staring at Steve’s drawn expression. Because now that he really let himself _look_ at him, he saw a weariness to his eyes and a grimness around his mouth that hadn’t been there before they confronted Kang. Steve held Tony’s gaze for a long, taut moment that made Tony wish desperately that he dared at least put a hand on Steve’s arm. But if he got close he’d… no, he’d not do that to Steve. He was a private man. That wasn’t the kind of thing he’d appreciate being made public.

“You’re not fooling _me_ , Stark,” Logan said suddenly into the tense silence, “and Barnes ain’t gonna stay blind for long.”

“Blind about what?” Bucky asked sharply, even as Steve’s gaze flickered through an odd mix of relief and anguish.

“ _Logan_ ,” Steve said warningly, and the Wolverine just shrugged.

But Tony just turned and let impulse take him the half-dozen steps to Steve’s side before he could think twice. He retracted the helmet the rest of the way between one moment and the next and let the armor slide away so it was his own hand that settled on Steve’s arm instead of metal. It was the kind of thing he’d done a thousand times before, right? It was no different here, now. Not really. Not with Steve looking like _that_. So weary. So devastated.

“How many of us were already dead?” Tony asked, his hand gripping Steve’s arm, and from the corner of his eye saw both Logan and Barnes go abruptly still.

Steve shuddered. “Everyone else on both teams but Noh-Varr, you, Carol and Thor. And Susan Richards too.” He tipped his head back, eyes closing. Tony could feel the tremble in his taut muscles. the short bursts of distressed breaths he was taking. Shock in the aftermath, Tony realized suddenly. Somehow Steve had been holding it together this long. Alone. The only one who remembered a truly devastating event that had cost him… everything. Tony swallowed hard. Listened. “He waited… surprised us… your suit protected you, Tony. But Bu-- _Ultron_ just blew apart the Baxter Building before we could get to Reed… Noh-Varr… he tried to get back _before_ … but he had no solid reference in the time-stream.”

Steve raised an unsteady hand. Gripped the back of Tony’s neck. Drew him close, wrapping his other arm around Tony, pressing him against the side of his chest. Tony let him, bleeding his armor off, turning it back into the suit he’d worn only that morning in Seattle but ages ago in time and experience and wrapped his arms around him in return. In this moment of anguish he could deny Steve nothing. His breaths were still coming quickly, roughly, tremors shaking his big body against Tony’s. He held on tighter.

“Time was still breaking,” Steve went on harshly. “Noh-Varr couldn’t fix on a useful point… not without breaking things more… but I could. Noh had to stay…his device somehow diverted all of you from your original return and sent me back with the nullifier too… back to when I was close enough to Bucky. Close enough to get it on him before Ultron could detect it and react. You weren’t dead when I left...” Tony sucked in a sharp breath. The implication of those trailing words, the raw tone, was that he soon would have been. He’d probably been planning to go out with a bang too – _the dark matter device? Oh god no not already no_ – and Steve had known it.

Then Steve turned his face slightly and pressed his lips to Tony’s. Soft. Aching. Longing. Tony fell into it for a handful of heartbeats. Until he heard Barnes make a noise like a wet cat behind them. Even then he could only pull away enough so they both could breathe, his gaze fixed on Steve’s closed eyes.

“That future will never exist, Commander. It disappeared when you put the nullifier on Mister Barnes’ arm,” Noh-Varr said calmly from somewhere beyond them both.

“What has happened to cause such distress amongst my brothers?” Thor asked from the same area – the door –, his voice a worried rumble.

“I know that,” Steve answered Noh, his eyes still closed, his desperate breaths finally easing. “I know it’s gone now… won’t ever happen… it’s already getting hard to remember some of it. But Tony…” He swallowed hard, opened his eyes to look into Tony’s intently. “Things were said. Things I don’t want to lose.”

“You won’t, Steve. We’ll talk.” Tony swallowed hard. Licked his lips, savoring the flavor of Steve’s lips there again. “I promise.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Warnings: References to a _canon_ self-induced abortion.
> 
> Author’s Note: Firmly AU – and STILL not a gender-swap (guess I should change the tags since it seems to confuse people). This Heroic Age is obviously not Marvel’s Heroic Age. I mangle canon and call it George. Leave if that offends thee. 
> 
> ~~~* Many apologies for the long delay in updating. Real Life has been crushing my creativity/spare time lately. I will attempt to be better at updating, but no promises. -_-; *~~~
> 
>  
> 
> =======================================

"That future will never exist, Commander. That causality was negated when you engaged the nullifier on Mister Barnes’ arm,” Noh-Varr said calmly from somewhere beyond them both.

“What has happened to cause such distress amongst my brothers?” Thor asked from the same area – the door –, his voice a worried rumble.

“I know that,” Steve answered Noh, his eyes still closed, his desperate breaths finally easing. “I know it’s gone now… won’t ever happen… it’s already getting hard to remember some of it. But Tony…” He swallowed hard, opened his eyes to look into Tony’s intently. “Things were said. Things I don’t want to lose.”

“You won’t, Steve. We’ll talk.” Tony swallowed hard. Licked his lips, savoring the flavor of Steve’s lips there again. “I promise.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Steve answered quietly, the ghost of a smile on his mouth that faded almost immediately. Then with visible effort, he gathered himself and straightened up, letting the hand curved over the back of Tony’s neck fall down to his side. But he didn’t step away. Or let go completely.

“Whatever memories of the future you have, they’re… it’s not real anymore,” Tony said, trying to reassure himself as much as Steve. “It’s gone now.” The future was still potential. Just potential. Both the bad and the good. Steve still made no move to let him go, holding him against his side, one arm around his waist, the need for comfort still seeming to override his normal reticence about overt displays of affection. And Tony had to wonder… what exactly _had_ happened between the two of them in that future?

Bucky’s voice was rough. “So is this future-that-didn’t-really-happen when you started kissing Stark too?” Tony jerked self-consciously. Years of habit made him try to move away from Steve, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do, but Steve didn’t ease his hold on him in the slightest, holding him in place firmly.

He didn’t fight him. Wouldn’t. Not now. So he just stood still in Steve’s hold, one hand slipping to Steve’s waist in return, pulse throbbing, aware of every movement, every shift of weight, every slightly-too-quick breath Steve took beside him.

Beyond, Thor made a low sound in his throat. “Indeed, I am made most curious by this turn of events as well, my friends.”

“No,” Tony said because he never knew when to quit while he was ahead, “most of the kissing started yesterday but if you want another demonstration…” He shot a sidelong look at Barnes even as Steve made a soft sound of annoyance near his ear. “ _Tony._ ”

“’S true,” Logan said, folding his arms over his chest, his expression already bored. “I smelled it on ‘em.”

Steve shot Logan a quelling look “It’s true it’s a recent development, Bucky, but it didn’t just happen in the future.” Then he lifted his head and faced Thor directly, arm still looped around Tony’s waist.

Tony looked back at Thor as well, keeping his surface cool with frantic desperation, while the rest of him was fighting back panic. Because this thing with Steve… well, he still barely believed it himself, and that made it far too new for _this_. Far too fragile. Throwing it out there for everyone to see was going to make Steve re-think it, he thought anxiously. Destroy it. And Tony would be back where he started, only with the knowledge of what he’d lost – how it might have gone, might still go – and he couldn’t bear that. His throat tightened enough that he almost choked, had to cough a little to clear it.

“Look, can we just get back to business?” he managed to say, his heart thundering in his chest, his pulse gone thick and painful, his armor stirring in response. He held it back, not willing to let anything distract him now.

Steve was still facing Thor, his chin up, expression stern, their gazes locked. Noh-Varr stood in wide-eyed silence near Thor, glancing between them all. And Thor, Thor was frowning. Tony’s heart pounded harder behind the RT, dread making him queasy, because after Steve, Thor was one of his oldest friends on the Avengers. And this was… well, he wasn’t exactly sure about Thor’s feelings on this, really, though Thor hadn’t seemed off-put by Jean-Paul or Billy and Teddy, he’d never said anything to support them either.

“Long has he pined for your regard in this fashion, Steven. Be very certain, here and now, that you do not just toy with the earnestness of his heart, my friend,” Thor said in a deep rumble, folding his arms over his chest, his words drawing a low sound of surprise from Tony. “No, it’s not his—” he began, but Steve’s arm tightened around him, hand flexing on his hip and the protest died in his throat. 

“You can be certain I’m not,” Steve replied, meeting Thor’s stern gaze calmly.

“So you _are_ serious? About _Stark_? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” Bucky snapped and it was Thor who frowned past them at him then.

“Have care, young one. I not know your full measure, yet – save that you now wear a mantle I have long respected – but tread lightly in this matter you do not fully understand.”

“Ease up, Barnes,” Logan added, shifting on his feet. “None o’ our business really.”

“Oh, fine, _now_ you say that, Logan,” Tony shot at him in a strange mix of giddy relief and lingering anxiety. Thor had known all along. And was okay with it. Was even looking out for _him_ , in a way. He could barely wrap his mind around that, letting his mouth run at Logan instead, while Steve’s hand flexed on his hip once more.

“We’ll talk privately later, Bucky,” Steve said, looking back at his oldest friend sternly enough for Bucky to subside into disgruntled silence. “But yes, Tony and I are together now.” Tony staggered a bit on his feet to hear Steve state it so blatantly, drawing a concerned glance from Steve before his attention returned to Bucky.

“Okay, okay, don’t shoot me for being surprised. I’ll shut up now. Jesus,” Bucky said, raising his one hand, palm out for peace, clearly annoyed.

Thor strode over and clapped a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “’Tis not an easy course you have chosen, my friends, but be assured that, I, Thor, stand beside you both.”

“Thanks, Thor,” Tony said, drawing a shaky breath. Thor nodded solemnly then took a step back, folding his arms over his chest and running his gaze over the others sternly. Tony glanced at Steve then. “You know, of all the ways I thought the first day of the team might go… outing us really wasn’t high on the list.”

“Neither was watching everyone die,” Steve returned softly, closing his eyes and turning his head toward Tony’s, bumping him with his forehead briefly before releasing him and stepping away to go to where Bucky lay. “But now, Avengers, we need to make certain that Ultron is completely gone from Bucky’s cybernetics,” Steve continued, his voice firm once again, his posture solid, the Commander back in control again, “and get Captain America’s arm back up and running.” The casual affection of that brief gesture had left Tony gaping, staring after Steve with his heart in his throat.

“Okay,” Tony said, finding his voice again somehow. Everyone turned to look at him. Steve too. He let a wry smile touch his mouth as something both warm and terrifying ran through him at the expression in those blue, blue eyes. “Science it is. Noh-Varr, first let’s get a force shield set up—”

~*~

In less than half an hour, Noh-Varr and Tony had managed to confirm that Ultron wasn’t lurking anywhere in Bucky’s control interfaces any longer. The cobbled-together future-time code nullifying device had done its job and destroyed the fragment of him hidden there. Of course, it had also partially scrambled the arm’s native programming as well in order to root him out. Thus, Barnes’ continuing inability to use it. Tony began the painstaking task of hacking into the truly ancient Soviet code and restoring what he could, and winging the rest. Noh-Varr was a great help with that part, offering a few Kree tricks for compressing and compiling that Tony quickly noted for his own future use too.

But even after the control code was restored, Bucky still couldn’t use the arm. It became a biological problem then, as far as Tony was concerned, and the Kree soldier was only limited help then as his expertise wasn’t in the wet-ware side of user-interface systems at all. So Tony made no protest when Steve gently reminded Noh-Varr it was time to leave for his rendezvous in Georgia with the Titanium Man.

It did reduce the hovering and crowding in the room considerably when Thor announced that he was going along with the Kree soldier to provide back-up. Though, from what Tony remembered of his fading memories of that cancelled future, Noh-Varr hardly needed it. Steve followed them out – after reassuring Bucky that he was coming back soon – to get SHIELD assistance ready for containment and transportation of the bad guy once Noh-Varr had done his thing.

Steve went personally because Maria Hill and Clint and the rest of the Avengers were apparently still hunting dinosaurs through the streets of Manhattan. Spider-Man has been right about the Killraven guy. He’d apparently slid through the waves of time-disruption into their present with his prehistoric pal just as Spider-Man had remembered. Last Tony had heard, they were trying to trap the thing in Little Italy without killing it – Killraven assisting – but the T-Rex was understandably distracted by so many small, edible creatures in close proximity. Mostly bike messengers. The incident was shaping up to be a bit of a PR challenge, but Tony was sure Maria Hill could manage it.

When Steve had left he’d gone without a word to Tony, though, which stung a bit. He buried the feeling resolutely and went back to remote testing the arm’s interfaces. The arm itself was undamaged, all the inner controls still fully functional.

The lab was quickly emptying. Logan had finally gone off to help the dinosaur hunters too – after it became clear there wasn’t going to be any fighting here –, so that left Tony alone in the lab with Bucky. Which wasn’t exactly something he’d been looking forward to. For many reasons. Most of them having to do with how protective Steve was of his former side-kick turned designated successor as Captain America. Normally he and Barnes got along fairly well, if not warmly. They were both practical men and they were both used to dealing with Steve’s own particular strain of uncompromising idealism. But now…

“So,” Bucky said from his place reclining on the exam bench, his flesh arm tucked behind his head, a narrowed, measuring look on his face as he looked Tony up and down deliberately. “You and Steve?”

Tony turned in his chair and fixed him with a cool stare, his hands pressed flat on the screens before him to keep them from shaking. “Oh? Do you have some charmingly backwards 1940’s prejudices to share with the class now, Barnes?”

“The Soviets were worse, actually,” Bucky said, a hard gleam in his eyes, his mouth tight. “But hell, I honestly don’t give a damn if you like to fuck men, women, or goats,” he continued, eyes narrowed, hand fisting behind his head. “Life’s too damn short to get hung up on that kind of bullshit. But this is _Steve._ I just don’t think you’re _good_ enough for him.”

Tony laughed, the sound hard and cold even as something vicious unknotted in his gut only to join the regular dance of nerves instead. Not a sexuality issue then, just plain old Tony-hating. That he could deal with. Pretty much. “Oh I’m not. And I damn well know it.”

“Huh,” Barnes said, eyeing him oddly then. “That’s not quite what I thought you’d say.”

Tony turned back to his renders again. Tried to focus on the circuit paths in the arm interface that still weren’t responding fully to Barnes’ commands. “Maybe you haven’t been around this era long enough to pick up on it, but I don’t exactly have the best track record with personal relationships. This wasn’t all my idea.”

“And yet… hey, whoa, you can’t tell me hooking up with you was _Steve’s_ idea.”

“Not really,” Tony said, staring down blankly at the images of the control nodes inside Barnes’ brain and trying to figure just how much of the truth he needed to tell Barnes to keep him from trying to sabotage him at every turn. He had no illusions about how well he’d fare in _that_ kind of contest. “Well, sort of.” He sighed. Struggled to find the right words for a moment, then, resigned, went for the shorthand of cliché. “It’s complicated. Not that I haven’t wanted to – for years even – but… well, for every reason you’re thinking and probably about a million more, he wasn’t ever supposed to know that.”

The frown on Barnes’ face was starting to look permanent. “That other-dimensional woman-you Logan’s been harassing you about?”

No one had ever said Bucky Barnes was slow on the uptake. Tony shot him a sharp look. Met Barnes’ considering stare directly. “Yeah. Her.”

“Steve makes his own decisions, but,” Bucky said, sitting up enough to lean on his flesh arm, his expression fierce, “hurt him and I’ll kill you, Stark.”

Tony met Bucky’s glare with a carefully blank look. This was nothing less than he’d expected. “And if he’s the one who hurts me?” Bucky frowned, but his dubious expression said everything. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Don’t worry, Barnes, I’ll be far more careful with him than I am with myself.”

Bucky went silent then, while Tony went back to fussing with resolution and angle on the scan renders, focusing on trying to find if it was some subtle damage he’d missed that was still keeping Bucky’s arm out of his control instead of thinking about how many ways things could go wrong with Steve. They still hadn’t even… okay, thinking about sex with Steve in the middle of a tech problem wasn’t helping matters. He took a steadying breath and focused on the scans. Right. Yeah. The malfunctioning cybernetic arm. Attached to Steve’s oldest friend.

Okay. Tony was still hoping it was a hardware rather than a wetware problem, but that hope was fading fast.

He and Noh had taken off the nullifier a while ago. The cybernetics in the arm were active and the systems should have re-connected with Bucky’s nervous system by now. He supposed it could be something as simple as a dead-man’s switch. Catastrophic loss of connection might have been designed by the Soviets to make the arm’s interface go inert in case their pet assassin was killed. Which meant no transferring the arm to another body and having their tech turned against them. It seemed like the deep kind of paranoia the Red Room had practiced, though Tony really hoped not. He didn’t really want to have to mess with what was already imbedded inside Barnes’ skull in order to give him a new controller for his arm.

Tony put his forehead in a palm and sighed in frustration. He wasn’t really a physiology expert. No matter how Extremis has re-wired him once upon a time. Granted, he was very, very good at human-machine interfaces, but the human side still wasn’t his true area of expertise. Not when things were going this subtly wrong. “Damn it, where’s Hank?”

“Here, my dear,” a deep, quiet voice said. ”I believe congratulations are in order as well.”

“Oh god,” Tony said, rolling his eyes up toward the ceiling and scrubbing a hand over his face wearily. “Not you too.”

“Isn’t it a major achievement to stymie both Kang and Ultron in one go these days?” Hank asked mildly, padding silently into view on his huge paws, his tone affronted. “Whatever is the matter with you now, Tony?” And Barnes was laughing at him, the ass, as Tony dropped his head down on his folded arms and groaned.

“God damn this week,” Tony muttered, lifting his head again even as Barnes continued to laugh in order to glare at him as Bucky said, “Guess the world really doesn’t revolve around the soap opera of your life,  Stark. Humbling to know, isn’t it?”

“Hm, you really should bring Henry up to speed, Tony. On everything,” Natasha said as she walked up to the table where Barnes lay. She stared down at him, her expression the carefully flat one that told Tony she was angry. Barnes apparently knew that look as well as he grimaced.

“Hey there, Nat,” Bucky said, offering her a sheepish grin that appeared to make no impression on her at all. “You didn’t need to come by too.”

“Of course I did. I was with Henry when Steve called for assistance. Henry and Tony will fix this,” she said to him, not looking away as she laid a hand on his shoulder, just above the line where metal met flesh. “And then you and I will spar. To test their work.” Bucky winced and Hank winced elaborately too, in sympathy. Tony just snorted, both amused and relieved to have someone around able to put Barnes on the defensive for a change. Natasha leaned closer to him, her expression cool. Barnes lifted his hand and brushed the long fall of hair away from her face, a twist to his lips as she met them with her own. Hank stepped into his field of vision then, big blue body blocking his view of Natasha kissing.

“Spoilsport,” Tony said.

Hank just raised a furry brow at him, his cat-like mouth open in his version of a grin. Tony grinned back then shrugged as Hank moved to his side and leaned over his shoulder, peering down at the renders on the display through his glasses. “Interesting,” he said, laying one big blue hand on Tony’s shoulder. “The midbrain interface is still unresponsive?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, scrolling through the images of Bucky’s brain slowly for Hank, highlighting key sections to indicate the trouble points. “The spinal lines are active, and the interface has signal, but the gross and fine voluntary motor functions are still down.”

“Does he have sensory and reflex response?”

“Ask Natasha.” Hank’s hand flexed on his shoulder as he chuckled. “Partial. Some reflex, no sensory.”

Hank made a low, curious sound in his throat, probably intended to be a hum, but it sounded more like a purr, his chest rumbling against Tony’s shoulder faintly. “All at once, or slow return? And can you show me EEG on this?”

Tony danced his fingers over the controls to update the display then leaned around Hank to shoot a look at Barnes. “Try to wiggle your fingers again.” Bucky’s left hand twitched a little, from the wrist, but the metal fingers stayed still. “See? There’s been some improvement – it was dead weight at first – but it’s not returning nearly as quickly as I’d like.”

“And you are the poster-boy for instant gratification, Tony, as we all know. Well, it’s been, what, almost an hour? This is excellent recovery progression after a complete code-wipe, in my humble opinion… and, well, that is very interesting,” Hank said, leaning closer to watch the shifting patterns of the EEG overlay on the render of Bucky’s brain until his furry face was right beside Tony’s. “However did they manage surgery of this precision back in the day anyway?”

“It wasn’t entirely surgical; I believe the control materials were injected and… grown into place,” Natasha said in a flat tone, having gone back to staring coolly down at a Bucky who was looking back at her with various expressions – from guilt to sheepish regret to amusement – flickering over his face. Tony felt a brief flash of sympathy for him; while his own brief relationship with Natasha had never really been anything but a job to her and a distraction to him, she’d been intense even then. He had to give Barnes credit for guts, sticking it out with her. She’d always been a hell of lot of a woman.

“Grown? How interesting,” Hank said, stroking his chin and leaning further over Tony’s shoulder, squinting through his glasses at the screen. “That certainly explains the lack of scarring and relatively minor skull intrusions. Some kind of mutant healer the Soviets kept hidden for this purpose, I presume?”

Natasha gave a brief nod, her hand drifting up from Barnes’ shoulder, backs of her fingers brushing briefly against the underside of his jaw. Barnes’ expression softened fractionally, his flesh hand drifting over to catch at her fingers. She let him hold on to them, her gaze still hard. “His name was Aleksei Andrev Belevich, a surgeon with an abnormally high survival rate for the time period,” Natasha said, her tone somber. “This eventually drew the Department’s attention, of course, and he was pressed into service for the Winter Soldier program. But he was an old man already, when they discovered him – he was alleged to have served the Tsar’s family – and he did not last long under their demands.” Barnes brought her fingers up to his lips as she spoke. Brushed them gently over her skin. Natasha didn’t soften her expression or pull away.

Tony stared at them, faintly startled. He’d had no idea Natasha was that serious about Barnes. He’d never seen her quite like this before.

Hank made interested sounds, only half his attention apparently on Natasha’s explanation, and tapped the screen with a claw poking from a fingertip, drawing Tony’s attention back to the displays. He rotated the scans of Barnes’s brain on his screens obligingly to let him check more angles. Hank purr-hummed again in approval. “The control module seems to be semi-organic, connected directly to the nerves,” Tony said thoughtfully, leaning back into Hank, who turned slightly, rubbing his furry cheek against Tony’s in a friendly way, much like the big cat he now was. “We could give them a jump-start.”

Hank hummed yet again. “You smell like Steve. Have you two been fighting again?” Hank asked mildly, his tone amused. “And yes, I think electro-shock might just re-boot the rest of the connections too. Shall we?”

“Electro-shock?” Bucky said warily, clutching Natasha’s hand to his chest. She let it stay there, in his grip, much to Tony’s continued bemusement. Natasha wasn’t really the hand-holding type. Except for Barnes, it seemed.

“I think unilateral placement of the electrodes should suffice. Since we don’t want to impair our good Captain’s memory and language skills further, just shock the arm into talking nice to his brain again. That is,” and a blue claw tapped the screen image of Bucky’s innermost brain in front of Tony again, “where the primary neuro-chemical translation is taking place?”

“Near as I can figure,” Tony said thoughtfully, absorbing Hank’s warmth through his back. It was comforting, Hank’s presence. He’d always been soothing to be around, for Tony, when he wasn’t in taunting-Simon mode anyway. “It’s not where I’d have put it.”

“Nor I. Rather delicately central, but it makes sense given the poor imaging methods they had back then and their incomplete understanding of the brain’s systems. X-Rays for soft tissue diagnosis! Really! I’d say 600 milliamps for three seconds, and then test the reflexes in the arm again once he stops convulsing.”

“Convulsing?” Barnes said, sounding even more alarmed this time, his eyes widening as he glanced between them. Natasha rolled her eyes toward the ceiling elaborately and slowly, clearly unconcerned.

Hank laughed in his throaty, cat-cough way and stood up straighter, depriving him of warmth but leaving a broad hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“We’re teasing you, actually, Mr. Barnes. You Russians. Always so literal. Well, mostly teasing anyway… I believe it’ll actually be better to jump-start the connections with reversed command impulses sent through the arm itself, in order to more smoothly re-initialize the neuro-chemical integration with the carbofiber transmitters.”

“Which means, in English?” Bucky said, eyebrows rising even as he looked vaguely relieved.

“Physical therapy, my lad.” Hank grinned as Tony shrugged in agreement. It was the least invasive method anyway. And Hank knew best on the medical angle. Tony would have gone for the shock; higher chance of immediate results. After the seizures stopped, anyway. “The connections are intact, it’s only the signals that aren’t quite meshing. Natasha my sweet, take your limp-winged beau here to a gym and make him use that recalcitrant device. Directed exercises first, and if that doesn’t promote markedly improved nerve connection in an hour or two, we can always try the electro-shock instead. But we’ll let Mother Nature have a try at fixing this for us first, hmm?”

“That plan is acceptable,” Natasha said with a regal nod. “Come along, James.”

Barnes sat up then, the scans under Tony’s hands freezing as he moved out of range. He hauled his cybernetic arm into his lap with his other hand to get it out of his way as he swung his legs toward Natasha. “So, you’re saying I just have to work it until it starts working again? I could have been doing that already.” He shot Tony a sour look over his shoulder. Tony just shrugged and said wryly, “Damn it, Jim; I’m an engineer, not a doctor.” Hank chortled appreciatively at the old joke but Bucky just frowned and looked between them, still annoyed.

“Ahem. Well, if you prefer to convulse and drool for the next hour or so,” Hank offered mildly, and mock-sighed as Bucky looked appalled. “I guess I should go into doctor-mode for gravitas then.“ Hank adjusted his glasses on his nose conspicuously, drew himself up to his full height, and looked down his blue cat-like nose at Bucky with a disdainful air. “I was reassured by the imaging scans that there appears to be no rupturing or bleeding within the brain or decreased nerve function along the spinal interfaces caused by the way the Ultron code was shut-down. Tony –, wisely, I believe – requested my considered medical opinion on those points before you put stress on those same nerves and your brain’s connections to the interface. Strokes do make recovery so much more difficult. However, if you would like a second opinion, someone can go fetch Hank Pym from Pymspace, or wherever he’s keeping the Academy these days, and listen to him say roughly the same thing after three more hours of detailed body scans most likely interrupted by rambling, dazed rhapsodies about the color of Greer’s eyes.”

“They’re green, by the way,” Tony offered, deadpan. “Oops. That’s a spoiler.” Hank laughed again while Barnes just looked between them, a frown on his face, vaguely confused.

“Okay, I believe you. Nat and I can do this. Thanks, McCoy. Stark.” Bucky slid off the table, cradling his cybernetic arm against his chest, already rotating the shoulder himself, back muscle rippling beneath his shiny uniform as he slid off the far side of the table. Natasha stood beside him, conspicuously not helping.

“We will contact you with updates on his progress,” Natasha said, her gaze cool as she glanced at them both, her gaze lingering on Hank. “Are you returning to the Raft, Henry? Will you need the car?”

Hank sighed dramatically, shoulders slumping. “I suppose I really should get back. Critical projects still underway and all. An Avengers work is never done.”

“Then we will drop you off on our way to James’ place,” Natasha said archly. “I prefer to train in a secure facility.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m working on it,” Tony acknowledged the jab with a touch of exasperation, hands dancing across the console as he stored the scans of Barnes in a secured database for future comparison if necessary. He’d been too busy saving the future to finish renovating the Tower. So sue him. “The SHIELD floors are okay…buuuut they did pull out all their equipment – something to do with taxpayer’s money – okay, never mind. Go. The main gym here will be good again next week, I swear.” He made a vague gesture in the air with one hand, waving them all off.

“Call me if there is any pain along your spine. Or if tremors start. Or if you start bleeding from the nose,” Hank was saying with bright enthusiasm to Bucky as he followed him and Natasha out of the room, cheerfully careless of Bucky’s appalled expression. They slowed down only long enough to gather up Bucky’s Captain America stuff; the gun belt and the shield. Then, in the next moment, silence fell in the room as the door closed behind their retreating forms.

Tony sat still amid the silence. Startled. Because suddenly he was alone again in his lab. Hawkeye’s team hadn’t returned yet. So the whole team had scattered. And Steve – who wasn’t technically in the same Avengers group as he was now anyway – had gone.

Steve.

Tony buried his head in his hands for a moment, wondering how long it would be before they’d get a chance to talk – privately – again, before he forced himself to swipe his hands back through his hair instead and straighten up. To turn his thoughts away from lingering memories of what might be to come, dark imaginings and useless longings. As Avengers, they rarely had time for themselves. He knew that. He’d always known that. Wishing otherwise was a waste of time. Tony dropped his hands back to his displays with grim determination, lifted his chin, narrowed his eyes and started re-activating the systems he’d shut down for safety’s sake while they were unsure about Ultron.

To work. Work was good. Work he could do. Resilient would be calling soon, if he knew Wyche. And the Tower certainly needed his attention. That might be enough to keep him from thinking too hard about things he couldn’t do anything about. Like the lack of Steve’s presence.

Fixing _things_ he could manage. Repairing things. Building things. Designing things.

But the rest? The longing he’d set loose for the first time ever? For that he needed Steve.

~*~

The light from Iron Man’s repulsor nodes was more than enough to illuminate his worksite in the narrow electrical services tunnel that ran beside the water mains beneath the Tower. It was near where the auxiliary power lines connected the Tower to the city grid and fairly inaccessible behind sealed doors and high security systems. He’d designed it that way on purpose.

Maria Hill had come back to his lab to pester him, once Clint and the rest of the Avengers finally corralled the dinosaur and its out-of-space/time owner, Killraven. She’d wanted advice on the best way to crate up a T-Rex for shipment to the Savage Land. He’d just given her a cold stare in reply and told her to handle it herself. It wasn’t like SHIELD didn’t have that kind of expertise on their own and he hated being pandered to. She was _their_ liaison, not the other way around.

Not long after that, Tony brought himself down here to restore the dedicated network connection to the Baxter Building. He figured he was about 90% done with the job; he’d only been at it for two and a half hours already. In the corner of his HUD, an image of Reed Richards flickered to life as he delicately fused a severed fiber-optic strand back together again.

“Tony, the quantum entanglement data I collected during yesterday’s extended time-loop incident is yielding disturbing results,” Reed said, not bothering with hello.

“Oh?” Tony asked absently as he flicked the next set of strands into place in the splicing box. His HUD flashed green, confirming his match of the line jackets before he focused a finger-node to the correct temperature range. It wasn’t difficult to repair the flexible plastic-glass strands, just meticulous and tedious work. Work he absolutely had to do himself; as it was the only way to be sure hostile signal relays weren’t installed without his knowledge. There was no way he’d allow even the possibility of SHIELD listening in on his data transfers to Reed.

Reed was still talking. “Particularly when compared with the data from the inter-dimensional incident two weeks ago.”

That got his full attention. Antonia again. “What made you decide to run that comparison?”

“Spider-Man’s dinosaur-riding friend, Jonathan Raven,” Reed said calmly enough, but with a thread of tension in his voice. Tony’s gaze focused on his image in his HUD and he noted Reed’s deep frown with concern. “He claims to come from our future – a future where Earth has been conquered by aliens he refers to as ‘Martians’ – despite the fact that they clearly are not from Mars –, but from the details he has since provided me, that would make him from a future I’ve never mapped. That lead me to suspect a dimensional shift instead, and the quantum data proved me correct. I located his world with my dimensional scanner. It is not a universe I’ve viewed in detail before, unfortunately, other than cataloging it as 691, as none of us are currently alive within that continuum.”

“Well, shit,” Tony said, frowning down fiercely at the dozen or so fibers still left to repair, his armored hands fisting against the sides of the box.

“Indeed,” Reed said, his long face somber. “Your encounter with Kang and Ultron most likely took place in a bubble-dimension extension of New York City as well as in our future. By the decay patterns and spin angles generated by Kang’s temporary fracturing of time, I estimate Ultron will attempt to destroy us in our actual dimension sometime within the next one to three years. This incident came right on the heels of the demonic incursion here last week -- Tony, to put it bluntly it would be dangerous to open a dimensional portal here in New York right now. Even viewing from this location is problematic. The fabric of reality is far too frangible here. Another incident could make the city split into pockets like soap bubbles, with just as much stability. If it happens, we’re looking at the potential dimensional collapse of the New York area – and I am uncertain what that would mean for the rest of our entire dimension as of yet.”

Tony met Reed’s somber gaze through his HUD with one of his own, attention focused.

“I’m sending you my projections now.” The data began to flow across the inner screens of his suit, but Tony only glanced at it cursorily, well used to Reed’s habit of sending data to back up every statement he made. But he knew Reed didn’t exaggerate. Or panic easily. If he ran the projections himself he’d come to similar conclusions he was certain. The surer tell was by how decidedly uncomfortable Reed seemed with the information he was relaying. And the numbers really weren’t good, Tony soon saw even with that casual glance. His breath hissed in. “Damn Immortus. And damn Kang. And damn that kid who played Iron Lad too, just for good measure.”

“They’re all the same man, essentially, Tony,” Reed said with a faint air of bemusement.

“I know that. I’m just making sure to get all of him. Will it recover on its own? What can we do to keep it stable in the meantime?”

Reed shrugged. “Not opening portals between dimensions voluntarily from here will help prevent a fracture, and yes, over time the dimensional walls will strengthen again naturally at this locale. But those calculations are contingent on our ability to curtail attempts to pierce it in this area for the foreseeable future.”

“Tell that to the magic-using crowd,” Tony said bitterly.

“I have. Stephen was… distracted, but he did some spell casting and now agrees with my assessment. I’m waiting for an audience with Lord Balder and Lord Heimdall in Oklahoma now.”

“I’ll get Thor on it, get you moved up the audience list so they know not to use the Observatory for a bit. Though Heimdall may already know… Have you told Steve?” Tony asked then, his pulse slow and hard.

“Not yet. The Commander is next on my list to contact, but I did want to inform you first,” Reed said. “As a fellow scientist.”

Tony’s lips quirked wryly. “And because I still speak non-scientist better than you? Okay, got it. I’ll finish up here and head on in to run damage control.”

Reed nodded. “That’s good, we’ll need that link live again to consult on this properly, Tony, thank you.” Then his image winked out. Tony was left to raise his brows at the space in his HUD where Reed’s image had been in grim surprise. Reed was thanking him. Wow. Things _were_ bad.

He bent to his work again, thoughts grim.

~*~

At first Tony was surprised by the text-only message requesting a meeting on neutral territory, – given who it was from –, but after a moment or two of thought grim resignation set in.

It was only a day after the whole Kang/Ultron mess had wrapped up and he still hadn’t seen Steve in person again, just traded a few short calls about that whole possible dimensional collapse business to confirm Reed’s observations. Avengers stuff only. Steve had seemed distracted whenever they spoke after that and it was starting to make him twitchy. Or that could have been the lack of sleep.

It looked like Commander Rogers had something fairly big going on over at the Raft. Something that made him seem a touch melancholy on top of everything else. Hank McCoy was involved in it too. Tony’d nearly bit his tongue raw not asking about it.

He’d spent the night in his old bedroom suite, barely sleeping four hours before he was up ripping everything Osborn had ever touched out of the entire penthouse for the rest of the day. It had been oddly cathartic.

But now it was late evening and he was flying to New Jersey’s Linden Airfield, with the Iron Man running radar-blind to Air Traffic Control, not wanting to panic them into thinking a supervillain attack was imminent at their exclusive little executive airstrip as he arrowed down toward the ground under cover of darkness. He landed with a half-skip, coming to a stop near the back door of the trucking company’s warehouse as he’d been directed. It sat across the access road from the airport itself, close to a wooded buffer strip that ran between the warehouse and the freight rail line beyond. At 3 AM even the truckers weren’t working yet. Or still. His first thought, as he let the Iron Man scan the area for threats, was for how clean the place was for a warehouse, which meant, Tony thought wryly, that he’s spent far too much of his superhero life wandering around warehouses in order to judge that kind of thing. His second thought was that it was a great place for an ambush. No witnesses. No bystanders. A decent amount of space to fight in.

Not that it was easy to ambush him, granted, but that never stopped the bad guys from trying. But this place seemed clean of threats.

He stepped over to the back door of the warehouse, not surprised to find it already unlocked. He could find only a single CCTV camera for the whole back corner of the lot, currently aimed the wrong direction. The internal security system – a good one – was already disabled as well. Someone was ensuring privacy, he noted wryly. Tony went inside and closed the door behind himself, jet boots scraping a little on the concrete floor, the sound echoing loudly. The interior was only dimly lit by a security light near the door itself. The rest of the vast space was dark, with hints of crates and boxes on pallets stretching off in orderly rows into the darkness beyond. The Iron Man saw much more than just that, however. One, no two, bodies in the warehouse. Human. Only one approaching him though.

“I’ll give you this, Stark,” Sharon Carter said from the shadows before walking out into the ring of light around the door, a bright figure in her white jumpsuit. “At least you’re prompt.”

“Agent 13,” he acknowledged, nodding once as his helmet vanished. He kept the rest of the armor active, not changing it back into clothing. This wasn’t a social call, after all. They’d been allies in the past, as well as familiar to each other while working together to keep Steve – or his memory – protected, but he wouldn’t count on that now.

“I’m not with SHIELD anymore,” she said, her gaze cool, remote as it skimmed over him. “I’m part of the covert Avengers team, Stark.”

“So I heard,” he said, meeting her gaze steadily. “But I’m pretty sure this trucking company is just another one of Fury’s fronts, so go on and say what you want to say to me right here. I’m sure Nick will get a kick out of it later.”

She was silent for a long moment, folding her arms over her ample chest as she stared at him. Sharon Carter was a stunning woman, Tony mused not for the first time, with those high cheekbones and straight nose, that clear, fair skin and long blonde hair. Except for the dead flatness of her eyes, and the distinct bulk of muscle under that armored suit, she could have been a fashion model. Or maybe a centerfold. She’d probably look glorious laid out on black velvet wearing nothing but tiny bits of matching lace and silk. He wondered, idly, if Steve had ever had her that way. The thought was enough to make him grind his teeth.

Her mouth quirked in a faintly bitter smile as her gaze hardened under his blatant perusal. “So. You finally got him.”

He didn’t dignify the obvious with an answer.

“Of all the things I thought might happen when I left him, this—” She shook her head, looking briefly annoyed. “I always knew, of course. Hell, I don’t think anyone _but_ Steve has ever really had any illusions about your feelings for him after ten minutes watching how you act around him. But I never thought he’d… the two of you… damn it.” Her mouth thinned and she lifted her head sharply, glaring at him again. “I don’t think you’re good for him, Tony. Flat out, I think you’re the worst person possible for him to be with.”

His stare was as sharp as hers. First things first. “Is this a prejudice moment here?”

She snorted in disgust but her gaze didn’t flicker. “Hardly. It’s a Tony-Stark-is-an-amoral-bastard moment.”

“Then I agree,” Tony said calmly even as something cold clawed at his gut and she narrowed her gaze on him, suspicious. First Bucky, now Sharon. He wasn’t surprised at all. Two of Steve’s closest friends disapproved. He wondered how long it would be before Sam Wilson piped up too. Though he was kind of surprised he was staying quiet, given that’s who the Iron Man had identified was hanging back further in the warehouse; Redwing had to still be outside somewhere.

“But you won’t walk away,” Sharon spat.

“Only if he asks me to.” The words burned his throat, but he meant them.

“You’re a dangerous man on a good day, Stark, but when you’re desperate…,” she said, her eyes hard and cold as she let Tony’s own mind fill in every bad decision he’d ever made (those he remembered, and those he could infer) in the brief silence. “He knows that.”

Anguish filled him in a rush but he kept his expression flat, unrevealing, though his eyes narrowed. “And you think he’s hooked up with me just to keep me under control.” It wasn’t a question.

“Just because you wiped your memories, Stark, doesn’t mean no one else remembers your escalating bullshit,” she said furiously, her gaze accusing. He stayed silent as she continued, guilt clawing at his throat even as his mind focused. “You know what you let happen, but you didn’t want to _feel_ it. To take full responsibility for it. You damn _coward_.”

There was motion in the shadows behind her then. Sam Wilson, in full costume, stood at the edge of the ring of light now, his gaze flicking over Tony dismissively before locking on Sharon.

“This isn’t really about me, is it, Sharon,” Tony said flatly, despite the gnawing pain in his chest that her words brought. It really wasn’t about him anymore. Not only, anyway. “Try Xavier. Maybe you can convince him to erase the memory of how you shot Steve in the gut and watched him bleed out in front of you.”

“Screw you!” she shouted, face red, eyes bright. “I’m not running from my guilt!”

“Yes you are,” he said flatly, while beyond her Sam frowned at him but didn’t jump in. Clearly this was something he’d agreed to beforehand – at Sharon’s request? – because it wasn’t like Sam Wilson to keep his opinions to himself. Particularly around Tony. “Steve would be disappointed, Sharon, if he knew that’s the real reason you dumped him.”

“Do you have _any_ idea what I went through to get him back? _Do you?_ Of course you don’t! You were too busy being happily brain-dead and oblivious.” She was tight-lipped with fury. “I did what I _had_ to do. And now he’s here again. Where he _should_ be. Where we _need_ him to be. But I…I can’t… I just… I tried...” She looked like she wanted to turn then and Sam made a move toward her, but stopped himself with a wince. He murmured her name instead. She shook her head tightly then, clearly warning him off, and glared at Tony again instead.

“Steve said he saw glimpses of the future too, when he was unstuck in time. Has he mentioned that to you yet, Stark? A future where he and I… we had a kid.” She sucked in a hard breath, her hands drifting to her abdomen, below her belt. She pressed them there, fingers tense, shoulders hunched forward as if remembering pain, face shrouded by the fall of her hair. Behind her Sam’s fists clenched, his narrowed gaze locked on her, his expression something unreadable, but raw. “Do you remember…? Fuck, of course you don’t,” she hissed, shooting Tony a sharp sideways glare.

“I have records,” Tony said flatly, pulse gone thick in his throat, his ears. And he did. He’d found files he’d left himself about the aftermath of Steve’s death. Horrible, terrible files.

“Then maybe you already know that when the Red Skull and Sin captured me, I cut Steve’s child out of me _myself_ in order to keep it out of their hands,” she said, her expression bleak but determined. “Because I damn well wasn’t going to let his legacy be corrupted by his worst enemy. I wasn’t worried about _collateral_ _damage_ at the time but, fuck it, I’m effectively sterile now. Then he… when he told me about those visions of the future he’d had… I… I couldn’t tell him.”

“The future is context sensitive,” Tony said hoarsely, more shaken than he wanted to admit. He hadn’t known all the detail of that, what she’d done to herself, or that Steve had seen his own future too while he was unstuck in his own lifetime. What did that mean to Steve now? After he’d seen yet another future entirely? A future with Tony instead of Sharon?

No wonder Steve was avoiding him.

“ _Context sensitive_ , is that really what you want to call it? Well, I’ve never really bought into that destiny crap anyway,” Sharon said with a bitter laugh, wrapping her arms around her chest again and hunching her shoulders a bit, “but you didn’t see his face when he talked about our, _our child_. And I couldn’t tell him that future was as dead as the child I’d once had in me. _His child_.”

“Sharon,” Sam said, speaking for the first time, his voice low, rough. “Stop it. I know you need to do something, but attacking Stark like this– this isn’t helping you.” She turned her head slightly, as if to look at him, but didn’t. Instead she straightened her back, dropped her hands to her sides in fists and kept her glare firmly fixed on Tony, her lips thinning into a frown.

Tony stared back at her just as grimly, holding on to his own poise desperately. There were probably options around her sterility, given the powers of people they knew, the alien tech they had access to. Which she had to know. So this was something else. Something she’d have to work through on her own. Or with Sam. Who sounded very much like he wanted to help her with it. He wondered when _that_ had started. But he didn’t let himself dwell on it. Couldn’t. “What do you expect me to do with that information, Sharon?”

“I don’t expect you to _do anything_ with it,” she said, glaring fiercely, which Tony knew was total bullshit, but he didn’t call her on it. She looked too broken for that right then; a mix of angry and helpless and self-loathing. He knew the feelings too. They were clawing at his throat right now. “I’m just telling you I’m sick and tired of always being used against him, of _everything he cares about_ being used against him. So I took myself off the playing field. At least I know you’re the master of looking out for yourself, Tony Stark, but just make _damn_ sure you’re always looking out for him too.”

Sam walked up beside her then. Put a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shake it off, but she didn’t turn toward him either.

Tony called up the helmet, but left the faceplate open, the HUD flickering to life in the air around his head, illuminating her white jumpsuit and Sam’s costume in patterns of red and blue and yellow. He turned for the door, looking over his shoulder at them one last time. Sharon was still glaring at him while Sam was watching Sharon, a distinctly concerned look on his face.

“Make your own amends to him, Sharon,” he said sharply as he moved toward the exit, boots ringing on concrete. “I’m still working on mine.”

“For Steve’s sake, don’t you dare fuck it up, Stark!” she shouted after him, but instead of taking the cheap, obvious shot in return, he let her have the last word as he passed out the door, put down his facemask and took to the sky.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: Firmly AU. This Heroic Age is obviously not entirely Marvel’s Heroic Age. The Mandarin? Traitor at Resilient? Fear Itself? *puts fingers in ears* LA LA LA! I can’t hear you, Fraction!

It was a bright sunny morning in downtown Manhattan, and Tony was hovering over Stark Tower in the Iron Man supervising the helicopter delivery of a shipping container of goods to the Tower’s primary landing pad.

It contained all of Jarvis’ high-end replacement appliances as well as the living floor and suites entertainment electronics. He didn’t really need to be out here for this, he knew, the pilots and cargo handlers were SHIELD-cleared, but he couldn’t really get started on the integrated internal data systems without the displays. He’d actually managed a few solid hours of sleep the night before and was feeling restless. His people in Seattle weren’t up yet either. He had a conference call scheduled for nine Pacific with Resilient, but it left him at loose ends until then. So he’d brought the armor out to watch the delivery in person.

All was progressing smoothly. It was even a little boring. Until the moment when he was practically tackled out of the sky.

“You sneaky _jerk!_ Why didn’t you call me and tell me you finally bagged Cap?!” Carol Danvers laughed in his face as she looped and spiraled across the New York skyline with his armored form trapped in her grip. She was holding him face-to-face as they flew, which, shame that, because he couldn’t feel her amazing breasts rub up against him quite the same through the suit.

“Because I like my ribs intact?” he managed to say even as she playfully squeezed the suit harder, setting off more than a few pressure warnings around his chest with her strength.

“Wimp,” she snorted, still grinning hugely into his face. “So babe-you actually _helped_ , did she? Got everything out in the open. Finally?”

While Rhodey had the selective emotional blindness of the utterly heterosexual, Carol was more like Tony; flexible in her tastes. She’d figured out his blatant hero-worship of Steve was actually cover for much more than that long ago and had been subtly urging him for years to just come out and tell him. She’d obviously never said anything about it to Steve however. Maybe because Tony knew she was in a pot-and-kettle situation with, well, someone similar of her own as well. And _that_ was a touchy enough topic all on its own, so she’d been sympathetic enough to keep her silence without him even having to ask.

“Maybe she did,” Tony admitted, reluctantly, if only because he wasn’t looking forward to watching Carol crow over that. Because he knew she would. Loudly. Nor did she disappoint.

“Fuck yeah! I called it!” She did a fist-pump without letting go of him completely. He took advantage of the slackening of her grip, however, to twist out of her grasp and fly under his own power again. Oddly enough, when he looked around he saw they were drifting above Central Park not far from where he’d first found Antonia’s armor, the mid-morning sunlight glinting off the reservoir far below them.

“So have you got him naked yet? Details, give me details, man!” she said, making grabbing hands motions toward him and grinning at him so wide and bright and excited that Tony couldn’t help but grin back at her even as he shook his head.

“Hell no, woman. I know you still have that guest blog on that damn low-brow gossip site. I’m not feeding you page-hits.”

Her expression fell only a little, her eyes still glittering with excitement, her grin wide and wicked. “I wouldn’t use _your_ _names_! Blargh! What kind of friend do you think I am?”

She grabbed at his armored shoulder and spun them around in mid-air with another laugh and he let her, even helping by spiraling them out wider, their wrists locked, through the warming morning air in a kind of sloppy aerial dance. Her long hair streamed out behind her like a banner, the red sash at her hips following like a flag. She looked beautiful and carefree and half her age for a moment in her vicarious delight and it made his heart ache because he knew she was too much like him; driven by responsibility and guilt.

But he snorted and laughed now, for her, still shaking his head in the helmet as they floated together through the air. “The gossiping kind? And nobody falls for those cover names. ‘Anton’ and ‘Esteban’? Seriously?”

“Pfft! I fudge things enough! Half the posters think Anton is Clint anyway.” She grinned back at him, unrepentant.

Tony reeled back, pressing one wide-spread gauntleted hand over his chest arc in mock distress. “Clint? _Clint_? Ugh! I’m hurt. Wounded. Scarred for life. Still no.”

“Hey! I told you about Jen!”

He rolled his eyes behind his helmet and made his tone as dismissive as possible. “Pity fucks don’t count.”

She briefly mimed outrage. “You catty bitch.” Then she reached out and rapped her knuckles on his helmet. “Open that up, damn it.” He popped the faceplate open with another roll of his eyes, the HUD flickering into hologram mode as he ruefully met her smiling gaze as she went on, “And it was not. It was a ‘we’re trapped and probably going to die and you’re hot and handy’ fuck. Which was _amazing_. So there.” She laughed, made a face and stuck her tongue out at him.

He laughed back, letting himself get caught up in her glee. Even if he really didn’t have much to share with her yet. She sobered a little then, staring at him intently.

“Are you good with this? Is it good, Tony, really?”

He sighed, mirth draining swiftly away. “It’s early, Carol. I don’t know yet. I’m… I’m still half expecting him to come to his senses and back out.”

She leveled a flat stare at him, folding her arms over her chest in a way that only emphasized her amazing breasts. “Oh that’s not happening. It’s _Steve_ , Tony. You know he doesn’t say things like that – especially in front of teammates -- unless he _means_ it.”

The words struck him hard. Because it was the truth. Steve _didn’t_ drop personal issues on the team like that. Not unless he really was serious. Oh damn.

“Well, then,” he said grimly, some of the brightness fading from the morning sun. “I guess it’s all on me.”

~*~

It had been a good call with Resilient, Tony thought even as he let out a heavy sigh, one hand braced against his forehead as he doodled idly on the design tablet he’d been using to take notes with during the discussion. Orders were rolling in for the car and Wyche was in a terrified kind of hog-heaven that Pepper was skillfully coaching him through. Macken had the nanofab project on-pace so he’d set Cababa and Pimacher working full-out on the idea he was hoping to pitch to Asgard soon. If he could swing an audience with Balder without Thor’s intervention, that was.

Usually he found that kind of speculative brain-storming stimulating, instead today it had left him feeling oddly drained. Somehow all that early-morning energy had vanished. Even after Carol challenged him to a race back to the tower – that the wench only won because she drew power from the sun itself – he was having a hell of a time getting any of it back.

Where was Steve? He’d been trying very hard not to just go looking for him. Trying to respect the lines Steve had drawn around the Avengers, his position as top cop answerable only to the President himself, and Tony’s still-precarious position with, well, pretty much everyone. But after that incident with Kang… the way Steve had looked at him, acted with him right in front of the team, how he’d spoken to Bucky and Thor about them. Well, he’d been hoping for some kind of resolution between them happening much sooner than this.

Granted, he probably couldn’t mess things up if Steve wasn’t around, though, given his track record, that was no guarantee either.

Tony glanced down at what he’d been idly doodling and all thought fled his mind in a surge of horror.

_What the hell was this?_

He flinched as his gaze skimmed power-load and structural notations. Scale and breadth. Armaments and yields.

_Why in hell…?_

It was a monster. A behemoth bearing little resemblance to anything he’d ever designed before. Far more fluid and organic, -- and yet still oddly familiar –, it was a nightmare of pure technological destruction.

The only saving grace was that, as it sat, it would never even move. Unless he… His fingers twitched the stylus. Toward one flaw he’d already seen a possible fix for on the tablet screen. Then he winced and closed his eyes firmly, sending the screen dark with a flick of his fingers instead.

No. _That thing_ was something that belonged firmly inside the Pandora’s Box of only theoretical possibility _with the fucking lid welded shut_.

He surged to his feet feeling a flutter of something almost like panic in his throat. He forced himself to stop. To lean his hands on the workbench and just breathe a moment.

He lifted his head and looked around the temporary lab he was still half-inhabiting. The two benches were still shoved together in the center from when they’d been used as a platform to examine Bucky’s arm. The jumbled pile of shaped metal, half-fabricated boards and twisted wires of a forgotten project lay where Antonia has swept them to the ground to give her space to work on her old-style armor across the room. With a grimace he straightened all the way up, and swept one hand through his hair, deliberately ignoring the way it was shaking faintly.

There was that message of hers still to play as well— Tony shook his head. No, he was in no mood to listen to a lecture from Madam Self-Righteous right now.

He looked around again, gaze narrowing, heart pounding. This workspace was crap. It was a converted conference room, for fuck’s sake. No shielding. No blast resistance. Inadequate ventilation, security, power, everything. Okay. He needed to get his real garage re-secured and usable right away. No more living out of a figurative suitcase.

Tony Stark stalked away from the tablet he’d only powered off, already lost deep in plans for moving his personal base of operations back here to New York, all thoughts of doomsday robots firmly banished from his mind.

~*~

“Tony? Jarvis?” The names echoed down the hall from the direction of the elevator core. Tony’s head jerked up as he recognized Steve’s voice.

The smile hit his lips before he could hold it back. He let it linger, surprised at how good it felt.

“In the back suite, Steve,” he called, and at once heard the firm tread of boots approaching on the bare wood parquet of the main hallway. The carpet runner was still on backorder, he vaguely remembered Ann-Marie telling him earlier. He made himself keep working. Focusing his attention as best he could on the scans he was doing for leftover listening devices while trying to ignore the heady mix of relief and anticipation that was definitely making his nerves jitter a little.

It had been two days since he’d last seen Steve. Two long days that Commander Rogers had been busy with some critical goings-on at the Raft. At least that was according to a casual mention by Natasha during one of her periodic check ins about the progress of Bucky’s arm recovery. Which was going quite well without any need for electro-shock therapy at all apparently. Damn it.

He couldn’t stop himself from looking over his shoulder and watching the entrance to the suite until Steve appeared in it though, the smile still lingering on his mouth. Steve’s expression seemed faintly strained until he found Tony with his gaze, then a small smile tugged at one corner of his mouth in return.

“Well, you look like you’re having fun,” Steve said, stopping in the doorway to lean a shoulder against the jamb after folding his arms loosely over that magnificent chest.

Tony glanced back down at the hastily patched-together bug-sniffing unit set on the chair across from him and shrugged. “I do like to get my hands dirty.” Only as he said the words did the double-entendre hit him, and he shot a wary look at Steve whose smile turned only very slightly wry.

“I know you do. It’s one of your strengths.” Tony let his hungry gaze run over Steve, willing to accept the mild reply at face value, for now, while noting the full Commander’s uniform he was wearing.

“Still on duty? I’m almost done here if your time is short,” he said as neutrally as he could, dropping his gaze back to the slap-dash instrument panel in front of him to try to mask his disappointment. Steve had finally shown up. Tony just had to hope he could be induced to stay for a while.

“Nope. Barring any sudden new world perils, I should have a clear night tonight,” Steve said with a sigh. He sounded a touch melancholy and Tony glanced back at him in concern.

“Everything okay?” he asked before he thought better of it and Steve met his gaze directly.

“It is now,” he said, which was vaguely flattering, yet still neatly avoided an answer. “Tony…”

“No, it’s okay, Steve. Really.” He quirked his mouth ruefully. “I’m just glad you came by. I’ve missed you.”

Tony cursed himself inwardly for sounding so pathetically needy and turned back to tinker with the bug-sweeper again; watched the indicators stay resolutely green. He was fairly sure he’d already found the last of Osborn’s bugs, SHIELD’s monitors and even some of his own old, obsolete security taps, but it was always worth being thorough.

“I missed you too, Tony,” Steve said softly and Tony looked up to find him still watching him, his gaze steady and intent.

Tony switched off the bug-sweeper by yanking the cord out of the wall and stood up. He wiped his hands on his pants absently before he remembered not to. He was wearing a pair of navy-blue slacks and a white tank top that was thin enough to let the light of the RT shine through it, but both were real clothing and not made of armor interface. For once.

He flung his arms out, gesturing around the room dramatically, unable to resist a small dig. “I’ve been right here.”

Steve started to frown and Tony plowed on adopting a lighter tone. “Actually, I’ve been busy as hell, cleaning out and getting the Tower ready for the team. On the good news side, my personal stock portfolio is up over 23%, New York isn’t showing imminent signs of falling out of the dimension, and it seems Pepper’s too busy re-structuring Resilient to harass me tonight. Less good, only half the Avengers levels are verified hostile surveillance-free, and, as you can see, the last of the new suite furnishings won’t get delivered until tomorrow.”

He gestured around at the empty rooms around them again with an apologetic frown as Steve’s expression began to relax into one of faint amusement. “But, I’m done bug-sweeping and upgrading security in the labs, the gyms, the meeting rooms _and_ my garage, so the Avengers could be back in as early as this weekend.” His flip tone faded somewhat then, became warmer as he let his arms fall back to his sides. “It’s almost starting to feel like my Tower again. And now, to top it off,” he gave a flourish with one hand, “the man I most want to spend time with shows up on my doorstep. So things are going pretty okay for once.”

Steve was smiling at him openly now, his eyes twinkling as his gaze lingered on Tony’s. “That’s good to hear.”

“But it would be even better if you came over here and kissed me,” Tony said, lowering his tone deliberately and facing the doubts gnawing in his gut head-on.

Steve’s smile vanished abruptly, and his eyelids lowered, veiling his gaze. “Sure,” he said easily enough before he strode into the room. Tony’s breath caught as it seemed to be only an instant before Steve was standing in front of him. Then big hands were cupping his face, tilting his head slightly so warm, warm lips could slide over his. Gentle and knowing and… oh fuck, _thorough_.

Tony sucked in air, his own lips parting automatically, and Steve’s tongue swept inside his mouth with it, no hesitation at all. He put his hands on the front of Steve’s reinforced tunic and held on tight, trembling faintly, a groan rising in his throat. His slacks went tight in a flash and he was grateful, for the moment, that they weren’t pressed closer together or he might have gone off right there. He swayed forward, but Steve’s hands held him in place as he just kissed him until Tony finally relaxed into it.

After long, breathless, mind-melting moments, Steve pulled away, his gaze fixing on Tony’s mouth, a thumb stroking the line of his goatee gently.

“Better?” Steve asked, his voice a low rumble. Tony nodded, his own voice gone, mind spinning, body aching and hard. He licked his lips. They were wet. Soft. Open. Well-kissed. This was no fantasy, not imaginary. After the last few days alone, with no contact from Steve, doubt had definitely taken root. But that doubt was gone now, because that had been real and honest and pure Steve. Longing choked him briefly, thick and raw. He’d wanted so much, for so long… and finally. _Finally_. Steve’s hands dropped to his shoulders to steady him as he swayed again and Tony somehow managed to find his voice.

“What do you do?” he heard himself ask hoarsely, staring at Steve’s mouth as his body throbbed with need. Because he’d been very carefully trying to _not_ think about this ever since that evening in his Seattle condo when Steve first confessed his problem, and, more often than not, failing miserably. Except when he was busy working, of course. Which was why he’d been working almost non-stop ever since.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked, puzzled, obviously not quite on the same page yet. Tony tried to rein in his impatience. Failed.

“About sex,” he said sharply, watching as Steve’s gaze clouded slightly. He let his hands fall away from Tony’s face, to his biceps, the crook of his elbow. Holding him loosely now, with only a shadow of the tender care of just moments ago. Though he didn’t pull away, not completely. That was good at least. “What _will_ you do, Steve? Because, god damn it, I’m horny as hell and I want you.”

“Tony, I told you…” Steve began, and his voice was edging toward that one tone, the one with the chiding edge to it that made him crazy.

“No, no, I heard what you said. Last week,” he said in a rush before it could, gripping Steve’s shoulders, holding him in place before Steve could pull away. Though he didn’t seem to be trying. Standing gratifyingly still in Tony’s grasp. “But I need to know… what are your boundaries? Because me, honestly, I don’t have all that many when it comes to sex – unless it involves animals or children, of course, then I’m _so_ not interested – and I’m… well, everyone knows I’m pretty innovative. So if you’ve heard of it I’ve probably tried it already. And I can show you. Just about anything. To try. If you want.”

The sudden flood of words made Steve blink a little, apparently taken aback. Tony ran back over the words he’d just spewed out and winced. Because it was babble. Eager babble, desperate babble; nothing smooth or suave about it at all. He forced himself to shift his grip, to flatten out his hands on Steve’s chest, to release his fisted grip on his shirt. He was breathing too fast too.

“I don’t know, Tony,” Steve said quietly after a few long moments where Tony struggled to remember how to breathe normally again. “It’s not something I spend all that much time thinking about.”

“Did Sharon?” And he wanted to bite his tongue out for saying her name even as Steve’s expression clouded in warning. But he persisted anyway. Because he had to. “Honest question, Steve. I’m not being puerile here, I’m just saying… there might have been things to work on… things that could have made it better for you two despite your… issue.”

Steve frowned at him for a moment. Then squeezed his shoulders once, gently, before drawing back, removing himself carefully from Tony’s grip. Tony fisted his hands at his sides desperately. “Are you offering to be some kind of… of _sex councilor_ for Sharon and me?” Steve shook his head in something like disbelief. “Only you, Tony. Alright, just this once. No, we had other issues too – mostly centered on the fact that she’s been used against me far too many times for her peace of mind. She’s a highly trained and competent agent in her own right… but she was taken hostage on our last group mission. They left Henry behind and took _only_ her. Just to strike at me personally. And it was the last straw for her. We… she still cares about me, but she says she just can’t… _be_ with me anymore. And I have to respect her decision. None of that has to do with sex.”

There was a hint of bewildered pain in Steve’s voice beneath the carefully calm recitation. And Tony ached for him even as guilt ate at his own gut for the fact that most of him was rejoicing to have it confirmed by Steve himself that Sharon had been the one to step back. Because he knew he’d never have had this chance with Steve if she hadn’t.

“Okay, I get it,” Tony said, averting his gaze as he paced in a loose circle around the chairs holding his bug-scanning equipment. “But you have to acknowledge that your… issue… probably had at least something to do with it.”

“It wasn’t about the sex, Tony,” Steve said firmly. Tony paused his restless pacing and looked back at him narrowly.

“Not only, but yeah, I’m sure that was more of it than you’d like to admit. You’re a hard, stubborn man, Steve Rogers. No one knows that better than me.”

Steve met his glare with a kind of sad resignation. “Sex isn’t always the driving issue, Tony.”

“Most of the time it is,” Tony said sharply. Then he laughed wryly. “Sorry, that’s my late-century upbringing showing again. I know things were different back in the day. Hell, I guess I should just be grateful you even want to kiss me.”

“Tony,” Steve said, sighing, his expression pained, resigned. “It’s not that. I find you… very attractive.”

“You do?” he said, far more pleased to hear those words from Steve than he probably should have been. Not right then anyway. “Tell me more.”

Steve smiled wryly but it was fond too. “You know perfectly well you’re a very handsome man, Tony, don’t fish for compliments on your looks.”

He grinned back deliberately even as his pulse throbbed wildly in his throat. “But I’m not looking for any old compliments – I want to hear how _you_ find me hot. Not the same thing at all.”

Steve raised his brows. “Honestly, Tony,” he said, giving him an exasperated look.

Tony sobered at once, pausing behind the chair that held his bug-sweeper and gripping the back with both hands. Tony knew Steve had been raised in a far different time and place. Knew that sexual relationships were probably the one place Steve _still_ had the hardest time integrating more modern attitudes; they were the things he’d had the least practice with after all. The man wasn’t a monk after all, but not by much. “Yes, _honestly_ , Steve. Until last week I had no idea you’d ever consider a relationship with a man… much with less me. I kind of do need to hear you find me at least a little physically appealing. It _does_ make a difference.”

Steve’s expression went fixed, a small frown between his brows. He shifted uncomfortably, but at least he didn’t look away. “That’s not very seemly.”

Tony didn’t relent, even as the faintly old fashioned phrasing he used pretty much confirmed his suspicions. Because this was important. If they were to have any chance of making it he needed proof Steve wasn’t forcing anything. He knew himself too well and a celibate relationship – no matter how much he truly cared for the other person – just wouldn’t work for long. “I know. But try. For my sake.” And Steve frowned, shifted again, his hands falling to his sides. Tony watched him closely, looking for revulsion, for regret, but found only a kind of vague embarrassment.

“All right then. I like your hands,” Steve said finally, hesitantly at first, then, more firmly with his usual courage. It didn’t stop him from flushing very slightly as he spoke though, even as he stared at Tony’s hands where he still held on to the chair-back for dear life. “You’re a rich man with working-man’s hands; they’re nicked and scarred and burned. They’re eloquent too. You’re always moving them when you talk. You gesture and touch things. Anything. Everything. You use them all the time, and I’ve always liked that about you, your hands, Tony.” He licked his lips, let his gaze flick up finally to catch Tony’s.

Tony stared back at him, breath fast, blood throbbing harder in his throat. Glad he was behind the chair at the moment because his cock was stretching out his slacks in a pretty revealing way. “I am very good with my hands.”

“Yes, you are,” Steve said, holding his gaze, awareness sizzling between them.

“Anything else?” he asked as a whisper.

“Your mouth,” Steve said, this time with far less hesitation, his gaze darkening slightly as he shifted his weight, his hips. Closer, Tony noticed, his pulse jumping. “You’re a very good kisser too. Though,” he paused and Tony licked his lips, deliberately self-conscious, until he saw the way Steve’s gaze fixed on the motion and then more heat washed through him, “the beard is distracting.”

“Distracting bad?” Tony asked breathlessly.

“No. Just… new.” Steve looked up into his eyes again and Tony sucked in a sharp breath at the heat he thought he saw.

“Steve…”

“Come here, Tony,” Steve ordered softly and Tony’s gaze flickered over him. Found a distinct bulge in the front of his uniform pants. Felt a rush of satisfaction mixed with heady relief even as he pried his hands off the chair and walked over to Steve on legs nearly made rubber by lust.

God how he wanted this man. Always. Forever. He stopped in front of him, hands at his sides, chin tilted, gaze fixed on Steve’s. “I’m here,” he said unnecessarily.

Steve raised a hand and cupped Tony’s cheek, running his thumb across his lower lip, rolling it down slightly until Tony swallowed hard, soft inner lip closing around Steve’s thumb in reflex, tasting the salt of his flesh on the tip of his tongue, in his mouth, his breath coming fast and quick around it.

“All those years ago, when you first started training with me in the gym, you put yourself in my hands… it seems the least I can do is put myself in yours here. In the bedroom,” Steve said softly, his words earnest despite the strong blush now staining his cheeks and oh god he was even more gorgeous to Tony that way, determined to be fair despite his obvious discomfort and embarrassment over discussing such an intimate thing as sex. “Show me how to make you happy here, Tony.”

No, not just sex, Tony realized suddenly. _Desire_.

Because that was desire hooding those blue, blue eyes. Making the pulse under his ear visible. Putting that flush on his cheeks, across the bridge of his nose. _Honest desire._

Tony groaned, his own pulse rocketing wildly, his heart soaring, lungs shorting him breath. “Oh god, Steve, you’re killing me.” He reached up and covered Steve’s hand with his own, pressing it closer to his face, his eyes fluttering briefly closed at the warmth, the press of Steve’s flesh.

“But I don’t want to hurt you – I am enhanced, and, well, you asked before, so I guess that’s my boundary, Tony. I’ll do anything except cause you deliberate pain. So I really hope you aren’t into that.” He laughed slightly, then sobered again. “Show me,” he repeated, the words soft. Urgent.

Tony didn’t laugh, but he wanted to. From sheer relief. He felt almost giddy with it. “Sex is like anything physically active— sometimes there can be pain. But I don’t go looking for it deliberately in bed, okay?”

“Okay. That’s good,” Steve said, shifting closer, his gaze going hooded as their bodies met and he felt the press of Tony’s cock blatantly hard against his thigh. “Are these real clothes?”

“Today? Yeah,” Tony said, smiling ruefully against Steve’s palm as Steve ducked his head closer until his lips were pushing his own hand aside and taking Tony’s smile in directly.

“Too bad,” Steve said against his mouth.

Thought vanished in favor of the feel of lips firm against his own, spreading his mouth wider, a warm, soft tongue teasing its way inside. Tony whimpered, wrapped his arms around Steve tightly, scraping his hands up the broad back and the smooth glide of the uniform that rode half way up Steve’s neck.

And all he could think was, _good god, the man can kiss_ , and then it was all breathlessness and pulsing blood and Steve’s mouth. Hot and sure and delicious. He didn’t even know what his own hands were doing anymore – Tony Stark, seducer extraordinaire – blind with desire, heady with relief that Steve was willing. Eager. Was even leading, coaxing, caressing _him_. He had no idea how long it went on, only that he actually gasped when Steve finally broke the kiss. He kept their heads bent together as they both worked for breath, Steve’s cheek smooth against his own, hand curled around the back of Tony’s neck.

He could feel the growing urgency of his own body, and of Steve’s. There was a small, helpless roll of muscle against muscle, over and over as they rocked together. Firm. Slow. He slid one leg further between Steve’s thighs, heard the muffled sound Steve made at the press of hardness along gratifying hardness and rolled his mouth against Steve’s neck, barred from skin by the high line of his uniform collar. The sound he made then was frustrated, low, raw.

“Shhh,” Steve said to him, even as his voice grew ragged, the wash of his breath searing against Tony’s bare, exposed throat. “Easy, easy.” Tony couldn’t tell who that was directed at; himself or Tony.

Tony could only shudder against him when Steve drew one of his hands to his mouth and tenderly breathed on then kissed the center of his palm, and oh god it should have been corny, cheesy, just an old-fashioned romantic gesture, but all he could do was continue to rock himself against Steve, lower lip caught in his teeth, a low, needy whine coming from his throat, and struggle not to come on the spot.

“Do you have a new bed in your suite yet?” Steve was asking him, and Tony was nodding, breath coming in panting gasps, still lost in the haze, the ache of want. And then he was lifted up, swung up into Steve’s arms in something perilously close to a damned bridal carry, but cradled high against that incredible, broad chest, secure in steady arms.

“Shit! I can walk!” Tony said, clutching at Steve’s shoulders, his neck, his whole body shuddering and curving closer despite the reflexive protest.

“I want to hold you,” Steve said then, his heavy gaze shutting down any further useless protests before he strode out of the room, carrying Tony and the suit in his bones with ridiculous ease out into the hall. Tony shuddered at his tone. Low. Hard. Faintly possessive. The sound of his long strides echoed in the hall, nearly drowned out by the rasp of his own breathing. And fuck, he’d never been into being a sub much since…well, not in years. But for Steve… anything. _Anything_. And it was a dangerous mindset, he knew, was nearly dizzy with it, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“Don’t let me,” Tony breathed into Steve’s neck as he shouldered their way into Tony’s private suite. Kicked the door closed behind them. Tony ran his lips, the edge of teeth along the line of Steve’s neck, beneath his ear. “Don’t let me scare you away.”

“Shh,” Steve said, soothing him again. “You won’t.”

He put one knee on the bed and followed Tony down as he laid him back on the mattress, crouching over him as he had so many times during their sparring sessions but not pinning him this time. He had one hand under Tony’s back, fingers spread wide, the other braced beyond his shoulder, letting Tony’s arms around his neck keep them close, their mouths rubbing in a damp, ragged half-kiss as their bodies shifted against each other.

His pants were already a wet mess, Tony could feel, slick with pre-come, the front darkening in a smear near the end of his own cock. He was glad he hadn’t bothered with underwear; but he seldom did anymore because of the Iron Man interface. It just tended to get in the way. Steve’s uniform had an integrated protective cup – though only sharp impact force hardened the material around the groin – that wouldn’t show moisture on the outside, but he had to be in similar straits. Because the close-fitting pants did nothing to hide the long, hard length of him when Tony lowered his gaze to it.

“Jesus, you’re big,” he said appreciatively, skimming both hands down to his hips as Steve gave a breathless chuckle above him.

“Not really, it’s just the uniform.” Tony’s hands drifted inward. He ran a knuckle up the length of him through the protective material, slowly, deliberately and Steve shuddered, cock jumping in its confinement, his eyes widening in what might have been surprise.

“I’m going to have to do some thorough manual investigation here, just for science, you see,” Tony said, his voice low, a thrill of triumph running through him.

Steve’s lips curved, his eyes lighting with amusement even as his hips shifted forward encouragingly. Into the stroke of Tony’s knuckle. “If it’s for science.”

Tony nodded. Inexpressibly relieved that he was willing to play along. To try. Even if it just ultimately left him frustrated. Something Tony had several very specific things in mind to try in order to avoid that outcome. Tony bit his lip and turned his hand around and cupped it boldly over Steve’s length, letting the tip fall into the hollow of his palm. Squeezed gently. Testing. Learning. He was hot. So hot and hard, even through his uniform pants. Steve’s eyes fluttered shut above him. His lips parted and he rocked his hips, rubbing himself deeper into Tony’s hand. His eyes opened, darker now. And Tony wasn’t sure how he kept talking, how he was even breathing half-way normally, but he heard himself say, “I’m a scientist. And an engineer. Would you rather I called it materials testing?”

“If you want,” Steve said, his voice hoarse, his eyes closing further as Tony shifted his grip, smoothing down the length of Steve’s shaft and back up again as best he could through fabric. Firm. Hard. Constant. “Your hand… that feels, that feels really good, Tony.”

“You like my hands,” Tony crooned, stroking again. Faster now, but interrupting it with long and slow. He could feel the looser slip of flesh near the tip as he ground the heel of his hand down harder on each upstroke; Steve was uncut. Of course. “And I like to use my hands; I’m good with them, aren’t I?” Tony’s mouth watered as Steve made a low, deep answering sound in his throat.

“Watch what I do with them, Steve,” he said, shifted his free hand up to Steve’s belt and worked it open before tabbing the seal to release the fly with his thumb even as he began to rub him faster. “See how I touch you.” He heard Steve gasp his name as his cock strained at the thin supportive underwear he wore beneath, the eager length arching into Tony’s palm. He curled his fingers around it. Made sure to do it deliberately, forcing his grip as far into the loose fabric surrounding it as he could. Fingers closing one by one squeezed, tight, tighter, and he was wishing he’d slid his hand inside to flesh first, too late, but as he did, as his knuckles whitened, Steve groaned and shuddered. Deep and hard and desperate. Tony slid his other hand into the gap of his pants in response to that sound, spreading them open and down with quick, greedy jerks to get at the shifting drag of Steve’s sac beneath slick cloth. He curled his fingers around them carefully, gauging the continued steady roll of Steve’s hips as acceptance as he cradled them, rolling them for a moment before a fingertip slipped back to stroke gently at the skin behind. Not quite to the hole, but near enough he felt the quiver of surprise. The involuntary flex.

“Feel good? Do you like my hands on you?” he asked, low and soft.

There was no reply. Only a panted groan. He looked up then and his own cock pulsed almost painfully at the needy, wondering look in Steve’s eyes.

He was watching Tony intently, blue eyes hazy with desire gleaming through lowered lids lined with dark golden lashes, his gaze flicking down to stare at Tony’s hands moving on him then back up again, skimming over Tony’s mouth, the RT behind the thin tank, the jerk of belly below, the wet, straining mess of crotch. Then at the lighter blue of his own uniform pants covering the thigh braced between the darker blue lengths of Tony’s covered thighs, at the line of his wrist where it vanished into the opening of his pants, spreading the fly wide. It was a raunchy, filthy image even in his own mind; the two of them almost fully dressed, with both of Tony’s hands deep in Steve’s pants, moving, moving and Tony wished he could capture it, somehow, but the systems weren’t in place yet. He could almost feel the heat of Steve’s gaze deepening. Watched him wet his lips with a swipe of his tongue, then open them again to pant louder, cheeks flushing pink.

“Put your thigh over me,” Tony whispered, watched Steve’s eyes flicker as he nodded, the hand that had moved down to cradle his lower back flexing up, pulling him toward him, their hips, their thighs meshing closer. Tony shuddered, barely kept himself from surging up, from coming, but somehow managed it, panting hard. He shifted his grip on Steve’s balls, curling his fingers beneath even as his other hand stroked him harder. Faster. “C’mon, lean on me, gimme pressure; you know I can take it,” Tony demanded harshly and Steve did just that, in a rush, looming lower over him even as he dragged him upwards, into and against the urgent rock of his hips. Pressing him closer, forcing Tony’s hand hard against his cock as his gaze fixed on the sight, slick-hot beneath silky fabric, those incredible, strong hips moving in long, desperate strokes against him.

Tony crooked his fingers on his other hand and pressed up, hard, rubbing into the nub he could feel deep beneath the ridged skin and Steve arched above him in surprise. “Tony!” he said, gasping, raw, eyes closed now.

“You’re close, aren’t you?” Tony said breathlessly, gleefully, relieved and gratified that Steve was receptive to prostate stimulation. Probably needed it, from the way he was gasping over him. “From my hands, from me touching you, you’re, you’re…oh god, god _Steve_!” And he couldn’t hold himself back anymore, he came on a groan, hips jerking beneath Steve’s thigh, spreading, bracing, arching up in long rolling waves of bliss as he shot endlessly into his already ruined slacks. His head lolled back even as his hands clenched, flexed, continued to stroke Steve through it, to rub, pressing up, fast and hard, and then Steve was groaning out his name like a litany as his hips jerked and jerked, fast, helpless, while wet heat spread into Tony’s hand through fabric gone glossy and slick.

Steve’s arm quivered. He let it collapse, falling to the bed beside Tony, pulling him toward him as he did. Tony’s elbow bent awkwardly, jamming into his side, and so Steve just lifted him up and draped him over his chest, lungs working hard beneath raising and lowering the ribs he lay over as Tony let his own head loll down against Steve’s broad shoulder, face burrowed against his neck.

“Jesus,” Tony managed weakly, swallowing, eyes closed. His own arm lay across Steve, hand curled over his far shoulder. The fabric of his uniform was slick beneath his face and he realized that they were both still fully dressed, for fuck’s sake. “So I guess you like dirty-talk too, huh?”

Steve’s chest jerked in a reluctant chuckle, his voice a little slurred, but thankfully more amused than annoyed. “Tony, please.” His arm came up around Tony’s back, curled him closer, abating the scold.

“No shame here, because, surprise, I have none. Neither should you. Ever. Oh god that was amazing. I can’t _wait_ to fuck you.”

“Tony!” There was surprise and shock in that interjection, but nothing extreme. More reflex. And probably mostly for the f-bomb. He hoped.

Ignoring it for now, Tony rolled his head, pressed his mouth to the bottom of Steve’s jaw. Felt the heavy, still-slowing throb of Steve’s pulse beneath his lips along with the flush of heat from a blush. “Scary? It’s not. It’ll feel good. Very good. Much better than what I just did I promise you.”

There was silence for a little while then as their breathing settled, their bodies relaxed. Steve’s hand stroked against his back the while. Slow and gentle. Then he took a deeper breath and Tony tried to mentally brace himself even though most of his brains were little more than post-coital Jell-O.

“I thought… that was what you wanted me to do to you,” Steve said, his tone husky, curious.

Tony smiled into Steve’s throat and bit back any hint of begging, because _fuck yes_ he wanted that. Badly. But he could be patient too, when he had to be, when the reward was big enough. “I do. Eventually. Very much. But there are no rules here, no set roles, nothing’s forbidden – unless it doesn’t feel good.”

Silence again. Slower breaths. More easing. For both of them. Tony felt limp and sated and content; especially with Steve a warm, solid presence beneath him, his arm around him holding him close.

“That did feel good… it’s been...” Steve cleared his throat slightly. “Thank you, Tony.”

“’m pleasure,” he mumbled against his throat. “Goin’ t’ sleep.” And then everything faded away.

~*~

He woke suddenly in the middle of the night to the nasty painful tug of pubic hair stuck to fabric by dried semen. Annoyed, he pushed himself upright on Steve’s chest, and by the half-masked light of the RT beneath his tank saw that the shoulder and elbow he’d been lying on was covered by part of the Iron Man interface – it happened automatically when his circulation became compromised – and banished it as he fumbled at his pants. Steve moved on the bed beside him, eyes gleaming at him from beneath half-open lids in the RT’s light.

“What is it, Tony?” he said, sounding far too alert for the hour it had to be. The rest of the room was quite dark, this suite fitted with a layer of blackout curtains just like every bedroom in the Tower. “Why are you armoring up?”

“’m not,” Tony muttered sourly as he struggled with the zipper. It _seemed_ open. Why couldn’t he get his pants off? “Arm tried to go to sleep. Armor got it. Hair’s stuck. Damn zipper.” It took him an embarrassingly long moment of fumbling to realize that he couldn’t get his pants off because his belt was still fastened.

Steve’s hands brushed his away. Undid his belt and the slide beneath it. Then, as Tony came fully awake at last, his hands curved under the loosened fabric and circled Tony’s waist, thumbs skimming along the bare skin and muscle of his lower abdomen. Tony let out a soft sound and he leaned closer. “We should go clean up,” he said against Tony’s cheek. Then Tony turned his head and took his mouth with a groan.

It seemed to be the last bit of encouragement Steve needed. He pressed Tony back down onto the bed, mouth working against his, warm and wet, his hands raking down urgently into the slacks and stripping them down Tony’s thighs until they caught on his knees. Tony arched beneath him, drew up a foot and clawed them the rest of the way down his legs with his foot until he could kick them off over his bare feet and out somewhere into the darkness.

Tony twisted his mouth away from Steve’s frantically. “Get that damn uniform off, Rogers, _off_ ,” he demanded, hands flexing on broad shoulder, muscled waist and Steve let out a hitching laugh above him and leaned back, moving out of his grasp to sit up beside Tony.

Tony had no idea when he’d shed the uniform’s combat belt – had he even been wearing it when he arrived? – but now Steve tugged the uniform shirt with the white star and bars off over his head in one smooth motion, the heavy muscles of his bare chest beneath rippling in the faint light.

“Jesus, Jesus,” Tony whispered as he watched, almost a real prayer for once, and slid his own hand down his belly, to his groin, where he gripped his rapidly-filling cock. Steve shot him a heated look and then froze a moment, watching Tony’s hand move on his own cock intently. He licked his lips, his face flushing. Frowned.

“That’s… Tony…”

“Pants. Off. C’mon, soldier,” Tony said impatiently, hitching up his legs, spreading them slightly to get a better stroke in, all the way from root to tip, his balls already clenching beneath. And yes, showing off too, with a flick of his thumb over the tip. Hard and wet and so damn ready to go again. Steve sucked in a breath and turned away sharply, bending forward to rip at the buckles and straps of his boots – he still had on his fucking boots! – until he could kick them free.

Steve stood in a rush, hands working at the open fly, spreading it, stripping the uniform pants down his thighs, knees, calves. Bending down to tug it loose when it caught on his ankles, getting the socks too and tossing it all aside. He turned, straightened, still wearing the close-fitting underwear, stained and stretched in the front, barely keeping the bulge of his hardened cock in check as he reached to strip those away too. Tony surged up then, letting his own cock go, and put his hands on the waistband in his place. Looked up the long, hard line of Steve’s body into heavy, faintly dazed eyes.

All lingering doubt about Steve’s sincerity faded. Vanished. Because that was definitely need in Steve’s eyes. Raw, urgent need. Naked desire. For him.

He’d never seen anything more glorious in his life.

“No,” Tony said with a wicked grin, tugging down on the last barrier of fabric gently, slowly. “Let me.” 

~*~

Tony sat in Reed’s lab drinking ink-dark coffee that tasted vaguely of burnt plastic and copper. Reed must have made it instead of Ben because it was utter shit, he mused in order to distract himself from thinking about Steve. And Steve last night. Both times. Then this morning. And oh god no. _No_. No getting hard now. Not with Reed sitting opposite him, and, for once, not fiddling with some potentially world-destroying gadget or running multi-level calculations on three different computers but instead simply staring down at his own hands. They were completely alone. He’d been trying to avoid this conversation, but Reed had initially called him over to discuss the dimensional fraying problem and now, well, here they were.

“Antonia’s dimension isn’t even comparable to the worst I’ve seen,” Reed was telling him somberly. “Hers is one of the more positive outcome ones I’ve reviewed, actually.”

“Antonia is having sex with your counterpart you know,” Tony had to say, a lump in his throat. At least Sue was nowhere to be seen, which didn’t automatically mean she wasn’t present, of course, but Tony didn’t bother to access his internal suit interface to do a check for her.

“I am already aware of that fact. The situation is an advantageous one for that universe,” Reed said, lifting his gaze at last to fix Tony with a firm look absent any embarrassment at all for the awkwardness of the topic. Tony had never been certain if Reed was aware of his bisexuality. Not that it would matter to Reed, most likely, but one never quite knew until it came out. No pun intended at all. “You are well aware that individuals of our extreme levels of intellectual capacity often have difficulties maintaining sufficient connection with the average human experience.”

“Holding on to our moral compasses, you mean,” Tony said with an ache in his gut. Oh yes. He knew.

“Yes,” Reed said, his gaze hooded, his usually mobile face still. “In that dimension, Susan Storm is not able to provide the same level of… stability for the Reed Richards there, which, as you know, is an undesirable situation for many reasons. Antonia Stark has attempted to fill that role as stabilizing factor, at least in part, and perhaps not wholly consciously, despite what may be,” and here Reed’s gaze fixed on him directly, “her actual romantic inclinations.”

“Well, damn, should have been nicer to her I guess” Tony said softly, scrubbing his free hand over his face while trying to ignore the way the mug in his other hand was shaking faintly. Reed _had_ monitored Antonia’s crossing. Of course he had.

“It is reassuring that she has taken those steps as probability is high it removes a future inter-dimensional crisis from the table. Which at this point, for the overall health of the multiverse, is a very good thing indeed, Tony, because in addition to this latest series of localized dimensional breeches and the consequent thinning of the interstices defining our dimension, the Future Foundation is attempting to deal with an incursion of… four hostile alternate universe versions of me who are bent on gathering certain esoteric resources in order to return to their own dimensions. The resources—”

Tony surged to his feet, the half-drunk cup of coffee dropping to the ground between them, splashing liquid across the metal decking under their feet. Holes opened immediately in the plating to allow the vile stuff to drain away and a small robot darted out to polish the surface afterwards, whisking away the unbroken mug and in seconds it was if nothing had ever spilled between them. “How long now?”

He at least had the grace to look guilty as he glanced up at him, Tony noted. “At this point my calculations are trending…”

“ _Reed_ , don’t make me do the math when you’ve already done it.”

Reed leaned his chin against steepled fingers, his expression bleak. “If nothing is done to halt the decay; seven days. A week.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special Chapter Warnings: Here is the sex I couldn't write a year ago. -_-;

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Interlude (On Such A Winter’s Day)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/938239) by [paxnirvana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxnirvana/pseuds/paxnirvana)




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